By 2030, state and local agencies will no longer be able to purchase new, gas -and diesel-powered vehicles for their fleets. They must be zero-emissions, according to state regulations.
The Helix Water District, which serves about 270,000 people in San Diego’s East County communities and has more than 100 gas, hybrid and electric vehicles, has been preparing for that transition for years. A few years ago, it invested in about 20 chargers for its few electric vehicles. But officials quickly realized a big challenge.
“We said, well, if I'm going to be required to buy an electric dump truck that's a class A vehicle with a 400-kilowatt, maybe 500-kilowatt-hour battery, I don't have any capacity to charge it,” said Kevin Miller, the operations director at Helix. “All I have is that three-kilowatt. That's going to take me, you know, two weeks to charge a dump truck. That doesn't quite work.”
Miller said the challenge was to comply with state regulations while still responding to emergencies like water main breaks and wildfires.
“Our customers won’t say, ‘OK, we understand the water main’s broken in the street and the flooding, but we gotta wait for the car to charge for two more weeks,’” he added.
Over the past year, the district has been building the infrastructure necessary to power its future, all-electric fleet of vehicles, which includes passenger cars, pick-ups, tractors, crew cabs, backhoes, and platform and dump trucks.
On Friday, officials unveiled the massive charging depot, located in El Cajon. It features 87 high-speed chargers with a charging capacity ranging from 40 kilowatts to 640 kilowatts. Altogether, the station offers six megawatts, which officials said is enough to power up to 5,000 homes. The station also has backup generators.
“We're transitioning with this project from the capacity to be able to charge something (that) would have taken us 30 hours to 20 minutes,” said Miller.
The $11 million project is mainly funded by grant dollars from the state and agencies like San Diego Gas and Electric and the San Diego County Air Pollution Control District.
Miguel Romero, who serves as SDG & E’s senior vice president, said the project is a “blueprint for how we can reimagine fleet yards and enhance them efficiently and safely to accommodate the shift to electric vehicles.”
That blueprint will be vital as public agencies start adding more electric vehicles to their fleets, and the network of charging stations for public vehicles grows. For now, Helix will share the system with neighboring cities and public agencies.
“We need to have accessible charging for public fleets at public facilities spread across the region,” said Miller. “That's how you make this work.”
Miller said Helix will invoice the agencies so that water customers aren’t charged. A rate or fee that the agencies will have to cover, part of which will go to SDG & E and to Helix, has not yet been determined, he added.
Paula Forbis, the San Diego County Air Pollution Control District’s officer, said the move toward having an all-electric vehicle fleet carries a beneficial public health component, particularly for the communities it serves. El Cajon, La Mesa, Lemon Grove, and Spring Valley, among other unincorporated areas, have some of the poorest air quality in San Diego County.
“These projects have a real impact on air quality because it removes the biggest barrier to vehicle electrification, and that is to provide opportunities for charging infrastructure,” she said. “Most importantly, we know that better air quality means better public health for our communities for generations to come.”
CARB estimates that if all vehicles in the state complied, there would be a reduction of nearly 327 million metric tons of carbon dioxide.
