IDAHO FALLS, Idaho (KIFI)- Idaho Falls Power has invested in electric vehicles for several years. They started their electric vehicle fleet with Chevrolet Volts and then added other plug-in hybrids to their fleet.
They recently bought two new all-electric pickup trucks, the Ford Lightning.
“We’re exploring and seeing how those work in our fleet and, any of the technical capabilities or issues that they might have and seeing how they perform in our cold weather environment,” Bear Prairie the General Manager of Idaho Falls Power said.
Prairie says they have learned electric vehicles seem to do well on snowy roads, with good traction and low center of gravities, thanks to the weight from the heavy batteries.
However, Prairie says one thing they discovered was surprising. “One thing that does impact their range is the cold weather due to, space heating. So about 40% of your energy. So the battery, or the energy that’s stored will go to space heating and 60% will go to, driving down the road. So think of it, if you’re driving your electric vehicle down the freeway, 40% of the energy consumption is going to keep you from being really cold, whereas 60% is used to propel you down the highway,” Prairie says.
Electric vehicles also don’t have the free charge ability that we see hybrids have, Prairie says that is in part why we are starting to see many more options for plug-in hybrids rather than fully electric.
“We’re starting to see a lot of the manufacturers come out with more of the plug-in hybrids and we have a few of those in the total city fleet where it’s got a gas engine for backup and then a plug-in battery similar to how the volts work, which is, older technology where you have 40 to 60 miles on a plug-in charge. And then after that, it’ll convert to the gas engine to run the electric drive train, which is kind of the best of both worlds,” Prairie said.
Prairie says despite all of the disadvantages, the electric vehicles do have strong benefits for the power company, has noticed.
“We’ve had really low maintenance on those and certainly fleet vehicles get utilized the lot between different people and a lot of times they’re maintenance ends up being a little bit higher with different drivers driving them. And we’ve had really low maintenance. So we’re excited with electric vehicles hopefully providing, lower maintenance costs and operating costs long term,” Prairie said.
The Chevy Volts, operated by the city, has also less than 100,000 miles on them thanks to the company only providing power to people in the Idaho Falls area.
Prairie also says they will continue to invest in them if they fit their needs. He said the power company has also invested in a hybrid bucket truck.
“It’s still a diesel engine, but the system that operates the hydraulics of the bucket is an electric battery. So they no longer have to idle the truck while they’re going up and down and working on power lines, which has a couple of improvements,” Prairie said.
Those improvements are the truck no longer has to idle when the bucket is in operation which can be hard on the diesel engine, and the emissions from the truck or nonexistent while in the bucket as well which helps the workers out immensely.
“There’s a real safety improvement with it being quieter and more efficient. So the electric kind of hybrid bucket trucks are coming to fruition, too. But, for us to we have to make sure that, all electric for if the truck itself was propelled by electric, that technology quite isn’t developed for our environment,” Prairie said.
Prairie says that while some states and utilities are buying a complete electric bucket truck, but as the batteries lose their range, in the Idaho Cold weather, the technology has yet to match the needs of the area. But he says the power company will continue to experiment with and research electric vehicles as the technology continues to develop.
