New filling station pumps natural gas for heavy haulers
New filling station that pumps compressed-natural gas for trucks and other heavy haulers opened in Orlando on Tuesday – not as the first in Florida or even the first in the Orlando area.
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The TruStar Energy station on Exchange Drive is the latest of several dozen natural-gas stations in the state, and those are just the ones that are supplied by TECO Peoples Gas.
But the nearly $3 million venture, a price that includes a 1.5-acre tract, is among a new breed of stations not tied to a particular client and open to the public.
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Adam Comora, TruStar’s CEO and president, said his company has built 90 stations in the U.S., has 40 more in the works, and the new one on Exchange Drive is the 10th in Florida.
The demand for natural gas as a motor fuel is on the rise, Comora said, because “it’s cheaper, cleaner and domestic.”
A competitor in the business of natural-gas stations, Clean Energy earlier this year opened a public station on Cargo Road near Orlando International Airport.
CNG is one of the most efficient fuels next to gasoline and diesel, and is cleaner and cheaper. Better than batteries, too. If you have a natural gas supply and use a $2K compressor to fuel the car, you can have a cheap mod done to any car. Subsidies? Forget it. There is nothing in it for the…
Trillium CNG and ampCNG opened a public station last year near Frito-Lay’s plant on Silver Star Road. TECO also is partnering with Orlando to open a station this fall to serve the city’s waste-hauler trucks.
Comora said the new station, near Florida’s Turnpike and Orange Blossom Trail in an industrial area of heavy truck usage, is big enough to fuel a few hundred trucks a day and is configured for an expansion within a year or two.
The station is near a main pipeline carrying natural gas. It dries and compresses the fuel to 3,600 pounds of pressure per square inch, which allows trucks to be fueled within minutes.
Natural gas is primarily methane. As a fuel, it has lower emissions and is quieter than diesel fuel.
TruStar is opening its Orlando station with the price of fuel set at $2.21 for an amount that is equivalent to a gallon of gasoline. Volume discounts will be as high as 34 cents per gallon.
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-cng-orlando-station-opens-20150721-story.html
