The City of Santa Monica's compressed natural gas refueling station was originally installed in 1997. Over the course of the past decade, the station began to demonstrate reliability and operability problems, especially the compressors. These reliability issues caused operators of CNG vehicles to begin to question the viability of natural gas as a motor vehicle fuel. In addition, it was apparent that the CNG storage capacity of the original station configuration was limiting the number of vehicles that could refuel on a daily basis. This hampered efforts by the City to increase the size of their CNG vehicle fleet. The decision was made that the station would need to undergo an expansion and modernization in order to remain a viable refueling facility for the City.
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The installation of the station upgrades was performed by Weaver Electric, Inc. with enginering oversight, inspections, and fire code compliance inpections performed by City staff. The existing compressor concrete pad was replaced to minimize vibration for the new compressors. Extensive trenching, concrete work, and electric utility upgrades were also required.
The objective of this project was to upgrade the existing station to include replacement of existing compressors, add additional CNG storage capacity, and install a new fast fill dispenser to accommodate refueling the growing fleet of natural gas vehicles.
The upgrade of the station has made fueling the City's growing fleet of Natural Gas Vehicles easier, allowing Santa Monica to continue to add CNG vehicles to their fleet. The new equipment is also more reliable, providing greater confidence to CNG vehicle operators.
The CNG station upgrade and expansion was sucessfully completed and the station is currently in operational service.
Greenfield
Marathon Compressor Co.
Matrix Engineers & Contractors, Inc.
NGV Inc
Noise control Corp
Weaver Electric
City of Santa Monica Street Maintenance Div & Engineering Division