High utility charges could derail MTA's 1.1 billion electric bus transition

Imagine that, poorly thought out green policies hit the wall of reality. Who would have thought that would happen? Maybe people who actually pay their own bills! But this is just poor planning and implementation.

The MTA’s $1.1 billion plans to buy 500 new electric buses could be derailed unless New York state’s utility regulator cuts the authority slack on its electric bill, transit officials warned.

Gov. Kathy Hochul and her appointed MTA leadership have touted ambitious plans to convert the entire fleet of 5,800 to electric power, beginning with the new purchase. But powering just the existing 15 electric buses currently costs two to three times diesel or natural gas, officials wrote in Dec. 6. comments submitted to the state Public Service Commission (PSC).

So with only fifteen electric buses it costs at least double the cost of diesel or natural gas to keep them charged. No one did a cost analysis comparing that operational cost? But never fear they have a commission working hard on that!

State law signed by Hochul last year required the PSC to reduce the impact of peak “demand charges” on large-scale electric vehicle (EV) charging operators like the MTA. The commission has until Dec. 31 to come to a decision on how big of a discount to give.

A discount! How lucky, except.

But the leading “solution” on the table “would result in far higher cost to operate an electrified fleet when compared to the MTA’s current predominantly diesel and gas vehicles,” the authority warned.

“Such a major cost escalation will undoubtedly harm the MTA’s ability to provide services… possibly resulting in cutbacks, increased customer fares, and deferrals of other customer service-oriented initiatives,” the comment said.

California has a plan in place for their commercial EV charging.

Other states give massive short-term rate discounts to EV chargers to help build demand. California, for instance, gave commercial EV chargers a 100% discount on demand charges for five years, the MTA wrote.

So after five years that is done for. Then what? Now mind you that is a state that has had to implement Rolling blackouts due to demand! So they give a hefty discount and leave the citizens holding the bag. So after five years that discount disappears and then the consumers eat the price hike. Which coincidentally would be too late to do anything as the fleets will already be electric. Going green by eating the taxpayers greenbacks!!! Short of some new energy development to boost output in a cost-effective manner being rolled out in the next couple of years we are looking at massive increases for the cost of using public transportation. link

butwhatabout SOLAR and WIND !!! ☠️

a reply to: xuenchen

I would think that the snowstorm that most of the northern states are recovering from answers that! But hey I am just loon on the internet so what would I know?

The issue is that people voted for female Ubercuomo knowing she's a ultra partisan crapbag. I moved out of New York state 2 and a half years ago due to Cuomo, and I can't believe the citizens of that state voted for even more stupidity.
I still talk to plenty of people back there, and have yet to talk to anyone who supported this joke of a candidate. One would think if she won the majority of votes, I would have at least ONE friend out of hundreds that supports her.

Trillions are going to be wasted before it's all said and done.

Texas power prices spike more than 400% in one day as bomb cyclone sends energy demand soaring

In some parts of Texas, prices for power to be delivered on Friday evening more than quintupled, topping $500 per megawatt-hour.
On Friday night, temperatures in Dallas, Austin and San Antonio are expected to dip below 20 degrees.
Outage data shows roughly 53,000 Texas residents were experiencing a loss of power on Thursday.

[markets.businessinsider.com...]

And there will be a huge EV problem if cold settles over large parts of the globe, because electric cars don’t seem to charge in freezing temperatures, leaving thousands or even millions stranded on the streets…
[news.yahoo.com...]

a reply to: hangedman13

That's how most politics works: Push through an idea/agenda, most often fuelled by lobbyism and then when it's way too late... "mistakes were made".

Yet in the meantime, able-brained people see this coming from miles away but are labeled backwards or against nature. I've been asking the last few years where all the energy will be coming from for these EV.

Lately in Switzerland they banned EV driving during times of energy crisis (hint, it will be an ongoing crisis). I am curious about when they try to pull that off in Germany. I charge my EV with my private photovoltaic power plant, I can also shut that off in case they want to forbid driving EV and then let's see who's sitting at the longer lever (hint: me). And if all things fail, then it's the V8 Diesel, they can go # themselves.

always interesting to see who doesn't post in a thread like this.

a reply to: network dude

Just say the T word and construe a connection, they won't be able to resist.

This is what 4 year pointless degrees has brought us. A bunch of useless people thinking they’re educated, yet couldn’t sharpen a pencil with a sharpener with instructions. Nothing about clean energy makes sense. It’s more expensive to produce, it’s worse for the environment than fossil fuels, and can’t support our infrastructure.

a reply to: Middleoftheroad

I love all of these windmills out west, destroying and scaring the land for service roads and power lines that will last thousands of years and, blocking the scenery ruining it. Where are the hypocritical environmentalists, stuck in their EV’s at a charge station virtue signaling?

There will always be very intensely eager people in government who ache to spend billions in tax-payer money... possibly because such expenditures will engender massive gains for themselves personally. Towards that end those same people will exploit any and all aspects of their "constituents" lives to secure support for the exercise.

I have an idea that for big cities, these expenses may be reasonable, but only because large population centers will always suffer the effects of massive pollution accumulations from public transportation. Air quality will improve, and thus public health may benefit, at least in the short term, where respiratory ailments can be problematic.

However, the idea that this is "Green" or "helps the environment" is misplaced. Electric vehicle manufacture is intensely damaging to the environment (batteries), and the actual benefits are concealed by the marketing of the idea as it is publicly extolled as "zero emission" while ignoring that the manufacturing process produces far more emissions than they would ever like to answer for. It might not always be that way, but right now it is.

The complaints about how much the energy distributors might charge is far from convincing. After all, they "charge" whatever they want to... it has almost nothing to do with actual "costs" (like most everything nowadays.)