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| News and Events:
Funding and Technical Assistance Opportunities:
Upcoming Events and Activities:
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| TN Local Power Companies Invest in Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure
Tennessee local power company BrightRidge recently unveiled its first public electric vehicle charging station at the Hands On! Museum in Johnson City. Over the next few months, BrightRidge will install additional chargers at four Northeast Tennessee locations. “What we’re really looking at is where is our industry going and where are people moving to,” BrightRidge CEO Jeff Dykes said. “People are moving toward electric vehicles.” Read more about BrightRidge’s electric vehicle activities here.
Additionally, the Knoxville Utilities Board (KUB) recently launched a rebate program for residential electric vehicle charging stations. The rebate will cover 100% of electric vehicle charging equipment costs up to $400; installation costs are not eligible for program rebate. To apply, KUB customers must have both a copy of the retail receipt for the Level 2 (240 volt) electric vehicle charging station as well as a photo of the newly installed charger. Learn more or apply for a rebate here.
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| Chattanooga Adopts and Studies Electric Bus Technologies
The Chattanooga Area Regional Transportation Authority (CARTA) installed a wireless, inductive charging station last summer to fuel its new fleet of electric, fixed-route transit buses. In cooperation with big data and artificial intelligence experts from Vanderbilt University and the University of Houston, CARTA recently received a U.S. DOE grant for more than $760,000 to study the operational effectiveness of the wireless charging technology and how it might fuel what could be a fully electric bus fleet by 2030. Click here to read more about the wireless charging station.
CARTA also recently received $2.2 million under the Federal Transit Administration’s Low- or No-Emission (Low-No) Grant program, which funds the deployment of transit buses and infrastructure that use advanced propulsion technologies. Eligible projects include the purchase or lease of buses powered by modern, efficient technologies. CARTA will use the grant funding to replace several of its diesel buses with new electric transit buses, expanding its current electric bus fleet. Learn more about CARTA’s award here.
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| U.S. DOE to Fund Electric Vehicle Data Collection Project in TN
With the rapid increase in vehicle electrification, there is a need for an up-to-date, publicly-available national dataset to understand end user charging and driving patterns as well as vehicle and infrastructure performance. Energetics, a full-service technology and management consulting firm, is teaming up with Clean Cities coalitions from across the country to work on the Electric Vehicle Widescale Analysis for Tomorrow’s Transportation Solutions (EV-WATTS) project, which was recently selected to receive funding under the U.S. DOE Fiscal Year 2019 Advanced Vehicle Technologies Research Funding Opportunity Announcement. Over a three year period, Energetics and its partners (including Tennessee Clean Fuels) will collect, validate, analyze, and make publicly available, with assistance from national laboratories, an updated national dataset that will include a variety of plug-in electric vehicle and charging equipment types, climate conditions, and end-user segments. Access to this data will be important for governmental entities at all levels, the research community, local planners, industry, and more. More details on this project will be released in the coming months.
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| NREL Seeking Data from Uber/Lyft/Etc. Electric Vehicle Drivers
Researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) are conducting a study to understand charging requirements for electric vehicles operating on behalf of Transportation Networking Companies (TNCs) (e.g., Uber, Lyft, etc.). The work will inform ongoing research on the barriers to electric vehicle adoption in this use case. Participating TNC drivers can contribute valuable data, which will inform the type and amount of electric vehicle charging infrastructure that must be installed to support a TNC electric vehicle fleet. Electric vehicle owners that utilize their vehicles for TNC companies like Uber and Lyft are encouraged to contact nrel_tnc_research@nrel.gov for more information on the program.
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| Metro-Nashville DGS Internship Opportunity
T he Metro-Nashville Department of General Services has announced an internship opportunity with its Division of Sustainability. The intern will work on a variety of projects, outreach, and educational initiatives that will focus on energy management, renewable energy, waste reduction, electric vehicles, and/or Metro-wide educational campaigns and community engagement for Socket, Nashville’s Sustainability Outlet. Applicants should be Junior or Senior undergraduates or graduate students and must be able to work 10 hours per week for 10 weeks during regular business hours. Students are encouraged to receive course credit for the experience, but course credit is not required. This internship is unpaid. Questions and completed applications should be sent to Laurel Creech at Laurel.Creech@nashville.gov. Click here to view the full internship description.
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| FUNDING AND TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE OPPORTUNITIES
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| Sign Up Now for a Workplace Electric Vehicle Ride & Drive
Tennessee Clean Fuels has launched the EV Experience, an initiative that provides electric vehicle ride and drives at no cost to workplaces across the state. Through the EV Experience, Tennessee Clean Fuels works with automotive manufacturers and local dealers to secure vehicles for employees to test drive at the workplace. The group educates employees and fleet managers about electric vehicles, related cost savings, how and where to charge, and more.
For more information or to schedule the EV Experience at your place of work, contact Alexa Voytek at Alexa.Voytek@tn.gov or 615-532-0238.
The EV Experience is being conducted on behalf of Drive Electric Tennessee, a statewide electric vehicle consortium, which released the first edition of its Electric Vehicle Roadmap for the state earlier this year. The Roadmap identifies projects and initiatives for local stakeholder implementation that will increase electric vehicle adoption across multiple Tennessee use cases and sectors, including electric vehicle ride and drives. Click here to access the Roadmap.
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| UPCOMING EVENTS AND ACTIVITIES
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| Register Now for the 2019 Tennessee SustainableTransportation Forum & Expo
TDEC, TDOT, and Tennessee Clean Fuels will hold the fifth annual Tennessee Sustainable Transportation Forum & Expo (STF&E) on October 1-2 at the UT Conference Center in downtown Knoxville. The research, technology, planning, and policy developments shared at STF&E aim to improve transportation efficiency, reduce vehicle emissions, and address the mobility needs of all. Click here to see the full 2019 STF&E preliminary agenda.
In addition to the forum, STF&E provides the following offerings:
Registration is currently open at http://stfe.eventbrite.com. An advanced conference registration rate of $35 will be available until September 17. Students may register for the event at a discounted rate of $5 and must present their student IDs at the time of event sign-in. For attendees that require overnight accommodations, hotel blocks are available at the Holiday Inn World's Fair Park (code: STR) and the Hilton Knoxville. These discounted rates will expire when the group blocks sell out, so be sure to book accommodations early. Visit www.sustainabletransportationforum.com for more information.
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| Webinar: Practices and Marketing to Increase Rural Transit Ridership and Investment
The Transportation Research Board (TRB) will host a webinar on Tuesday, August 27 from 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM ET to feature research on best practices and marketing to increase rural transit ridership and investment. Presenters from Nelson/Nygaard Consulting Associates and ICF will provide an overview of rural transit ridership research, discuss marketing practices for rural transit agencies and state transportation departments, and identify how to measure return on investment. Click here to learn more and register for the webinar.
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| Double Decker Transit Mixer in Nashville
Transit Now Nashville and the local chapter of Young Professionals in Transportation have partnered to host a Double Decker Transit Mixer on September 5. Attendees will ride on a double decker bus and explore proposed future transit centers along the south Nashville corridor. Speakers from WSP (an engineering firm studying the corridor) and the Nashville Civic Design Center (a nonprofit planning for a SoBro transit center) will present throughout the mixer. Learn more or RSVP for the mixer here.
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| Renewable Natural Gas Workshop in Nashville
RNG WORKS is a two-day technical workshop and trade expo hosted by the RNG Coalition for the North American Renewable Natural Gas (RNG) industry; this year’s RNG Works will be held in Nashville from September 11-12. The event is designed to educate feedstock owners (landfill, wastewater, livestock, agriculture, food processing, etc.); RNG project developers, operators, financiers, and engineers; and RNG end-users (fleets, municipalities, utilities, etc.) about RNG best practices and resources for increased development, deployment, and utilization of RNG across the region. Click here to register for RNG WORKS. Learn more at http://www.rngcoalition.com/rng-works/.
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| Inaugural TennSMART Industry Tour
On October 1, following the conclusion of the 2019 STF&E, TennSMART will host its inaugural Industry Tour at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). Tour attendees will walk through ORNL’s National Transportation Research Center to learn about the lab’s transportation and mobility research; an afternoon networking reception will be held after the tour.
Due to security restrictions at ORNL’s facilities, attendees must provide their country of citizenship upon registration. Non-US citizens have until September 13 to register. Click here to learn more or register.
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| Run on Less Fuel Economy Demonstration
The North American Council for Freight Efficiency (NACFE) will hold a three-week Run on Less Regional event throughout October 2019. Run on Less Regional is a fuel economy demonstration for trucks that typically travel no more than 300 miles from their base. Participants will actively demonstrate a variety of commercially available freight efficiency technologies; provide real-time vehicle monitoring and reporting; and highlight emerging technologies, not yet commercially available, throughout the Run. Run on Less results will be published in a report in March 2020.
The 2019 event will feature the following 10 fleets operating in a variety of regional haul applications in different geographic and climate areas, including Tennessee: C&S Wholesale Grocers, Hirschbach, Hogan Transportation, J.B. Hunt, Meijer, PepsiCo, Ploger Transportation, Schneider, Southeastern Freight Lines, and UPS. Click here to learn more.
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| TennSMART 2019 Fall Member Meeting
TennSMART will hold its 2019 Fall Member Meeting on November 5-6 at the FedEx Institute of Technology in Memphis. Attending TennSMART members will discuss the latest challenges and opportunities in intelligent mobility and will have the opportunity to network with peers and other stakeholders while exploring some of FedEx's latest freight technologies. Click here to register. Learn more about the event at www.TennSMART.org.
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| Idle Reduction Report for Heavy-Duty Trucks
NACFE recently released an updated version of its report on idle reduction technologies. According to NACFE, the average truck idles about 1,000 hours a year, which wastes money and fuel, increases harmful emissions, and reduces overall operational efficiency. A plethora of idle-reduction solutions have emerged in recent years to combat unnecessary idling, including on-board diesel and battery units, engine start stop technologies, diesel heaters, and driver training modules. Each solution has its benefits and challenges with respect to fuel and emissions reductions, upfront cost, maintenance costs, infrastructure, and more. Click here to read the report.
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