Hybrid bucket trucks diversify our fleet

In 2017, we acquired our first hybrid bucket truck, allowing our electric crews to do their work dozens of feet in the air, without running the truck’s engine the entire time. Since then, we’ve acquired several more of these trucks, bringing our new hybrid truck total to six. 

“These trucks have changed the way our crews are working in the field now. With the entire aerial part being electric, there is no more noise pollution,” said Dan Norton, Manager of Supply Chain Operations. “Our operators are having more positive interactions with customers who come up to them and want to learn what Colorado Springs Utilities is doing to be better environmental stewards.”  
Each truck costs $218,000 to purchase. While this is about $33,000 more than the non-hybrid bucket trucks we normally purchase, we’ll be able to recover the investment after just eight years. The investment will more than pay for itself as we normally keep our bucket trucks in commission for 10 years or more.  

According to Altec—the maker of the hybrid bucket trucks—utility vehicles idle in park for 65% of their total engine hours. An hour of engine idle is equivalent to 25 miles of driving. Excessive idling increases downtime, maintenance costs and negatively impacts engine life. 

Not only can our operators now do their work in the air without the truck’s engines running, but they can also sit in their trucks and run the air conditioning or heat without turning the engine on. These features also run off the electrification part of the vehicle. The trucks plug into a normal outlet to charge--there is no special charging station needed. While a battery can last a couple of days on one charge, the crews still plug them in every night to charge.  

Springs Utilities leaders project an annual fuel savings of about $3,000 per truck. With six trucks in our fleet, that’s an average annual fuel savings of $18,000. The lifetime fuel savings for each truck is predicted to be almost $31,000. Each truck will prevent about 16 metric tons of CO2 emissions from going into the air, with a total lifetime savings of about 162 metric tons.  

Of our six trucks, one of them is being used by the streetlights group. The other five are being used by Electric Central Construction and Operations. While these trucks offer great diversification for our fleet, we aren't going to be moving to an entirely-hybrid fleet anytime soon. 
 
"We want to ensure we have some redundancy in our fleet, so while these hybrid trucks offer a lot of great benefits, we'll also keep some of the traditional trucks in our fleet too," Norton said.