Civil Engineering Reference
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refuel the vehicles. Even though they are not included in the base case,
additional hostlers will be considered in the sensitivity analysis.
Figure 3. Electrical costs per DGE by station size.
Fuel Price and Rate of Increase
The VICE model's diesel fuel price of $2.563/gal is the average of the
most recent 12 months (ending February 2010) listed by EIA (2010a). The
natural gas price of $1.183/DGE is taken as the commercial price listed by
EIA (2010b) and converted from cubic feet to DGEs using EIA's conversion
factor of 1,028 Btu per cubic foot. Both diesel and natural gas fuel prices are
averaged over the most recent 12 months to take into account seasonal
changes.
It should be noted that fleet operators frequently purchase their natural gas
for less than the commercial price mentioned above. They can do this by
purchasing from a gas marketer in deregulated markets, from a commodities
market, or from a middle man that purchases from the market and sells a
contract to provide fuel and optional services for a given amount of time.
These other purchasing avenues are not used in the model because they are
less common and have no common price that can be tracked and forecasted.
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