 Thank you for being here we have an exciting announcement that we're gonna make in just a couple moments but I wanted to take a minute to introduce some of the folks who are here we of course have Mayor Murrow Weinberger pleased to have the mayor with us we have here Commissioner Scott Moody chair of our Electric Commission we have City Councilor Hannah King board eight we have Commissioner John Bayling from the Department of Environmental Conservation with the state of Vermont and joined by Lee Martin and Deidre Ritzer we have the BED team we're pleased to be joined by so many colleagues here for what is going to be an exciting announcement and I think we're gonna wait just a second here and then we're gonna go ahead and get started but we'll we'll want to be giving some room because here comes the subject of the announcement so obviously we're here today because behind us here is the first all-electric line crew bucket truck in the state of Vermont and about to go into service right here in Burlington thanks to a partnership between the city and Burlington Electric the state of Vermont and with support from the BED team in the community we're really excited to roll out this truck behind us I'm gonna give just a little information contextually about it and then we're gonna hear from some of our other speakers I wanted to note that a couple of years ago our line crew actually came to me and said hey we want to replace our tools that are fossil fuel powered on our bucket trucks with electric versions we're talking about pole saws chain saws and I couldn't have been more excited to hear that because we have our net zero energy goal here in Burlington at Burlington Electric we're trying to electrify everything that we can and to know that our team that's out there working in the community to keep the grid working to keep the lights on is thinking about this as well and having innovative ideas was really gratifying so we've made that investment we've been in replacing our our saws and chainsaws buckets pole saws with electric versions and now we have the opportunity to replace one of our diesel trucks with an electric truck and what that's going to mean is we have a vehicle here that is a 210 kilowatt hour battery for propulsion it's going to get this vehicle around 115 miles of range we think about the community and what the bucket truck is doing it's typically out in the community driving you know a number of miles but not not typically a hundred in a day much less than that when it's idling there's no more idling it's going to be a hundred percent electric so we're saving all kinds of fuel in terms of that it has a 36k wh battery that is power sorry a 36k w charger that's going to charge that 210 kilowatt hour battery it's going to take around you know six hours seven hours so we'll be charging it up overnight during off-peak times it also has for the bucket and the other systems a separate battery that is charging using a level two charger like you would use for your electric vehicle at home and so all the systems here are electric they're all going to be charged off of BED's a hundred percent renewable electricity which we're excited about and the other thing that's kind of unique here is we think about large vehicle electrification we've been electrifying lawn mowers commercial mowers in the city we've been electrifying sedans and even SUVs this is a big vehicle this is a vehicle that weighs a lot that's that's you know really doing a lot of heavy-duty work in the community and if we can electrify this there's all sorts of other opportunities that we're hopefully going to be able to pursue but we have to demonstrate the technology and that's what the exciting thing here is we're going to be able to put this truck to work very soon folks are going to see it around the community unique in its wrap it's got a net zero energy logo on the hood it's wrapped in the the white and green a little different than the traditional orange and we're going to be able to report out to other utilities to the community to the state how's it doing how's it working what improvements can we make as we move from what is cutting edge first-generation technology to second and third and fourth generation as we go so we're really excited we're grateful for y'all to be here today i'm going to turn it over to the mayor for some remarks thanks good afternoon everyone thank you all for joining us being part of this exciting announcement we're excited to have partners from the the state and city council here as well this is as hopefully everyone in the room knows really brunt has been moving aggressively to move forward and electrify everything and reduce our carbon emissions as quickly as possible this is a goal we have for the city the city team city vehicles and buildings is a goal we have for the whole community the we try to do this across the board as Darren described but it's not something just a bd i think it's important for for everyone know citywide when we have a vehicle or other piece of equipment that is coming to it the end of its useful life we are reviewing and whenever possible making a decision to electrify it we've done that not just here in bd but also in the police department the fire department the traffic team and more the parks department has lawmakers that are electric and has been using them for years string tremors chainsaws we even have an electric sweet street sweeper for the airport and i'm pretty sure we have an electric zamboni is right um and uh however there has been a um limit to what we have been able to electrify up until now when it comes to our heavy duty vehicles and heavy duty trucks and we are very excited to today be announcing what is easily the most awesome technology in our electric fleet vermont's first all electric bucket truck the um this would not have been possible without the integral funding support that we received from the state of vermont um and uh it's also not we're not even possible without the support of the birth electric commission we're here from scott moody in a moment which has for many years been a strong backer of this um uh this electrification strategy and our hope in with announcement like today is that when people see that it is possible to electrify something even as large as one of the city's largest pieces of equipment it really makes all burlington residents business owners think uh that we are we're in a new we're in a new era here we're in a new time when it is possible to electrify and power with burlington's 100% renewable electricity just about any piece of equipment and uh we hope to be a partner to burlington residents and businesses in doing that um thousands and thousands of time in the future as we as we move forward with this aggressive effort to combat climate change through electrifying everything so uh thank you again everyone for being here and with that i'll hand it back to you thank you mayor appreciate it we're going to hear next from the commissioner and i want to just reiterate our thanks to the state for the grant funding that made this possible and the partnership to the administration we couldn't have done it without them and so commissioner thank you very much thank you and good afternoon glad to be here one thing i want to know when my son was 10 i don't think you would have gotten him out of this truck so i hope you i hope you bring it to some elementary schools and that's a great great looking piece of machinery um one of the things i want to touch on obviously this is great for climate change i really applaud the city's efforts in in this regard the electrification of vehicles is huge for vermont you know the majority of vermont's greenhouse gas emissions comes from transportation so this is where we're going to get it done there's another piece of this that i don't think is as prevalent which has to do with with uh other pollutants that are caused by diesel so the reason we had the money to to give uh to burlington electric in this case it came from a settlement with the volkswagen corporation some of you may remember this in in 2015 they admitted that they had tinkered with the software in about a half a million vehicles to have a defeat emissions controls so think about if they had put that kind of effort into actually reducing emissions where we'd be but they put it into cheating but it did result in a massive settlement with a number of states the state of vermont's portion of that settlement came to 18.7 million dollars we administered that to something called the emergency mediation trust that they get there right environmental mitigation trust sorry um and my colleagues here dear to ritzer and lee martin are largely responsible for distributing those funds and we've used it for a bunch of different projects i was with them last fall at the first trash truck in vermont that's all electric uh we had a major uh school bus project and a bunch of those buses were here in chitenden county so we're making this move we're making this transition towards electrification of all vehicles but particularly these heavy-duty vehicles and that's very important so the emissions control defeat devices what it what it amounted to was they were selling cars that were emitting nitrogen oxides which we call nox 40 times the state level right by cheating and defeating the systems they're putting 40 times the amount of nox into the atmosphere that they should be nox is a highly reactive chemical it has direct health effects it triggers asthma worsens asthma it also has an interactive effect with things called pm-2-5 which is small particulate matter and with ozo and what this the impact of that especially in cities like burlington is an increase in childhood asthma it's a major impact on the elderly and on disadvantaged populations all across the country so it's it's very important that we start replacing the traditional diesel vehicles with these electric vehicles so i'm really happy to be here today i'm glad you're doing this keep up the good work and thank you thank you very much commissioner um next we're going to hear from city councilor hannah king and we appreciate as well the city council's support for this project so city councilor king thank you sorry i have to do the open the phone thing um what an exciting day the transition from fossil fuels to electric energy is a crucial part of addressing climate change the summer we've experienced catastrophic and historic flooding smoke from wildfires and closed beaches climate change is here and we need everyone to be working towards a more sustainable energy future this all electric bucket trucks that's an example that transcends city limits and signifies more than a technological advancement it's a statement of intent today is yet and yet again another example of brollington's ability to be a leader on our climate and not zero goals thank you to the state of vermont the entire brollington electric team and the mayor for making today possible and last but not least in our speaker lineup uh is our line worker kieron canavan who is going to be driving this truck around the community uh and who i i should mention does a really great uh job with something we call powertown which is a little safety exhibit that we have where school groups can come in and learn about all the ways to keep safe and i'm excited that in the next iteration of that that the students who come in and and see the truck bay here and see powertown i might be able to see this truck as well so kieron take it away thank you um i'm really excited about this addition to our fleet um i still can't get over how quiet and smooth it is driving around it's kind of a surreal experience for such a large vehicle um but i'm really uh um happy and proud to be one of the individuals demonstrating this technology in brollington and i think it's going to be a great uh teaching tool when we're out interacting with the public thank you thanks kieron so i think with that uh we'd be glad to take any questions folks have so having to charge a first six hours could be a little difficult but if you in the future do you and azure have separate tasks and you know one will possibly be charging when you get yeah so i think for for storm coverage in brollington i think we're going to be good with this truck and with the remainder of our fleet one thing that i've been thinking about is you know we do mutual aid where we send a truck outside of brollington to help with storm and you know recovery uh sometimes we do that in vermont some occasionally we do it outside of vermont right now i don't think we would send this vehicle on a mutual aid trip particularly outside of vermont my hope is in the future range is improved charging infrastructure is more uh available and that there are options where we could have a vehicle like this that would be able to go on mutual aid so this vehicle is primarily going to be servicing the city and it's a great vehicle to do that but my hope is is the technology advances will have that capability as well to think about sending an all electric bucket truck on a mutual aid trip what about down the line a truck that can then put some energy back into the grid as it's driving around is it capable or are we going to wait it's a great question um you know we're not contemplating that initially with this vehicle but you think about you know i said 210 kilowatt hour battery that's uh that's a significant battery that's that's roughly double what a typical EV would have for propulsion so if there were opportunities in the future to install the type of charging infrastructure you would need where it's it's bi-directional uh you couldn't vision a scenario where a truck like this might be able to contribute to peak demand needs you know for does that with the f-150 lightning you have to buy a special charger there's other oems that are looking at that technology as well so that could be exciting and not just for this vehicle we think about you know we have electric transit buses in burlington and we hope to have more of those as we get more large vehicle electrification you could start to think about those batteries as being two-way batteries that are available to the grid in certain circumstances as well so definitely on deck for for future consideration. I don't know commissioner we um so i i think i should mention too as part of this grant we have a conventional vehicle that we decommission and take out of service um you know we try to run a reasonable investment schedule for our bucket trucks and for our fleet as a whole um i think we'll want to get a little bit of experience with this one before we you know purchase a replacement vehicle again we'll probably hopefully a year or two of experience under our belts and we're going to want to monitor the technology because i think just like we've seen with EVs where you know we have a Nissan Leaf out here that we bought for BED back in 2013 that has less than 100 miles of range and we have a Chevy Bolt that we bought in 2017 that has like 250 miles of range so i think you know by being an early adopter we're driving the market and that's important but i'm hopeful that we'll be able to look at this next time and the range is going to be you know bigger the efficiency will be even stronger so we're excited we when we replace a vehicle as the mayor said every single time we're going to be looking for electric technology so we're going to be looking at that with the bucket trucks with our own fleet with the lawnmowers with everything at BED and really i think within the city too yeah so i don't have a specific timeline for the next bucket truck but hopefully within the next couple of years we'll be able to add another one state funding would be helpful too but i don't want to speak for the state and federal funding might be available as well so what did the the brillington electric commission think about this was there anything controversial about this project too expensive or reliability was the commission behind you 100 percent or i don't know if i want to maybe put our commission chair on the spot here if he's willing no not at all i mean i think i would reiterate what the rest of the speakers have said in that i mean this is just a marvel of technology and we're behind it 100 percent and looking forward to it with the key around it here as a teaching tool and hopefully as an inspiration to the people of the city of brillington as we as we electrify the fleet all the way around the city hopefully you know this thing this behemoth here serves as as an inspiration where we're 100 behind it and very proud of it today thank you thanks god i should mention too that this vehicle with the state support cost birlington electric less than what a traditional diesel vehicle would have cost so not even counting on the operating savings from electricity as a transportation fuel being you know cheaper in many cases than conventional gasoline the capital investment here was less than what we would have had to put forward so this was strongly supported i think by the commission and council all the way through if i remember correctly and michael correct me if not i believe it was 722,000 roughly is that that includes the transportation you get here 721 change 722 with the transportation cost right i think you're gonna be looking at you know more roughly like half of that cost or maybe a little less than half depending on you know which vehicle you're getting so there there was a premium here the grant funding helped offset the premium hopefully as the technology evolves the premium will be less as well any other questions we can answer if not i think mike am i correct that we're going to do a little bucket demonstration right it's going to take it outside and take it up all right thanks everybody and we'll look forward to seeing that happen right suiting up over here so