The Coachella Valley has a high concentration of alternative fuel vehicle(AFV)usage. It is critical that a network of fueling stations is available to handle the growing volume of fuel required to continue successful use of the AFVs. The CNG station located in Cathedral City had reached its capacity level upon the implementation of the Waste Management of the Desert CNG refuse truck program and the Coachella Valley Taxicab program and could not keep up with demand. To resolve this problem, Cathedral City and the City of Rancho Mirage teamed together to fund a higher capacity system that would quadruple the stations capacity.
91000.00
Cathedral City, as lead for the project, entered into a contract for the equipment purchase and installation services.
The objective of this project was to replace the current compressor system with a new system that will increase fueling capacity from 20 GGE per hour to nearly 100 GGE per hour. In addition to the compressor; a new control panel, electrical conduit, and plumbing will also be added. The site is located in Cathedral City at the corner of Date Palm and Gerald Ford Drive, at an Arco gasoline station.
The project was complete in July 2002 and the station now dispenses nearly 2.5 times the CNG fuel as it did under the old configuration, filing vehicles in one third of the time. At the time of this report, over 800 AFVs operated within the Coachella Valley.