Alternative Fuels Power Construction
Date Posted: April 2, 2014
Posted In: News,
The ribbon cutting for Parkway School District’s grant-funded project to build a fueling station and introduce 30 buses operating on compressed natural gas (CNO) into its fleet garnered television coverage. But the bigger construction story may lie in the opportunities that projects such as Parkway offer for St. Louis construction firms.
When the construction market ran out of gas in 2008, some local firms turned to alternative fuels as a new revenue source. That move has resulted in work across the country. NGFS (Natural Gas Fueling Solutions), the local company that managed the fueling station project had its beginnings in the construction depression that is just now ending.
NGFS, a national company based in St. Peters, was founded in 2011 by principals in the firms of Cissesll Mueller Company, LLC, a commercial real estate developer and contractor and Wiegmann Associates, a mechanical contractor.
They were joined on the Parkway project by Ross & Baruzzini, a local engineering firm with national transportation expertise, as electrical engineer and Lion CSG, a locally-owned WBE/DBE civil engineering firm, headed by Nicole Young.
James Dong of Raymundo Engineering, Inc., a Walnut Creek, CA firm with two decades of experience in alternative fueling station programs, was the lead engineer. Work on the project was started on Dec. 20, 2013 and the site was turned over to Parkway on March 11.
Lead engineer Dong said that the expertise of the team members and the willingness of Parkway’s facilities team to pull the trigger on ordering long-lead items such as compressors enabled the complex project to be completed on a fast track.
In a partnership with East-West Gateway Council of Governments, Clean Cities, and Laclede Gas, Parkway received a $1.53 million federal highway funding grant to purchase the 30 CNG buses and fueling station. The project will save Parkway an estimated $100,000 per year in fuel costs, as well as, reducing the amount of emissions emitted into the environment. Total cost of the Parkway program is $4.3 million
While the footprint of the CNG station is small, the project was extraordinarily complex. It is located at the rear of the sprawling Parkway School District site on North Woods Mill Road. Requirements that gas be separated from overhead power lines precluded slow-fueling operations – a low-pressure solution which NGFS implemented for waste management company Republic at its Bridgeton, site. A quick-fill station was built with an infrastructure of valves and compressors, and pumps that resemble filling station pumps with snap fitting pressure hoses instead of gasoline nozzles.
The compressed natural gas used for Parkway is drawn directly from the Laclede Gas main. The gas comes from the main at 5 psi and is delivered to the buses at 3,600 psi. It takes approximately 10 minutes to fill a bus. The Laclede main is located not far from an Ameren Missouri transmission line. There are also quite a number of overhead wires feeding the Parkway campus. Around the site of the station the wires needed to be dropped from the poles and run underground.
Duane Mueller, president of NGFS, who is an owner/broker at Cissell, said that projects such as the one at Parkway aid America’s fuel independence by using readily-available natural gas and put local tradespeople to work building the infrastructure to support alternative fuels.
Parkway’s CNG station is emblematic of growing alternative fuel construction opportunities across the country, including in this areas, Herb Tschannen, said. Tschannen, who became vice president of Wiegmann after serving as director of corporate engineering for Macy’s, is CEO of NGFS.
Tschannen said NGFS has been experiencing extremely rapid growth. The company has built CNG and LNG/LCNG (liquefied gas/liquefied compressed natural gas) fueling stations for fleet operations, public fueling centers, and public entities like Parkway. In addition to the fueling stations themselves, Tschannen said NFGS serves as a consultant on fleet conversions and on the code, safety and other issues involved in maintenance facilities servicing CNG/LNG vehicles.
Ross & Baruzzini will be working with NFGS as a strategic partner on design/build facilities, Tschannen said.