BGE rolls out electric buses for employee shuttle service

BGE is going electric with a pair of shuttles that bring employees between the company’s facilities in the city.
The Baltimore Gas and Electric Company is rolling out two electric buses made by Proterra this spring. One was rolled out last week, and the other will arrive in April, according to the utility company.
The shuttles are being introduced to transport employees between the company’s Spring Gardens campus in South Baltimore (site of these storage tanks) and a new customer service center that is opening at the downtown headquarters in April. The employees of the downtown center will have access to parking at Spring Gardens, then can hop on the shuttle to HQ. The parking area will have charging equipment that can be used for the buses as well as other kinds of vehicles.
According to Bay Area–based Proterra, the 40-ft. buses are zero-emission vehicles, saving 480,000 pounds of greenhouse gas from being spewed into the atmosphere on an annual basis. The vehicles will also eliminate the need to use 11,000 gallons of diesel fuel per year.
In a statement, BGE CEO Calvin Butler said the buses “will not only provide an efficient way to get our employees from one location to another, but will also serve as active research lab that will help us plan for and build out the infrastructure necessary to support other fleets across our service area.”
BGE will also look to learn from the buses. The company will look to take lessons in implementing electric vehicles statewide. The company is among the stakeholders who spent a year working on a proposal to the Public Service Commission that would implement a statewide network of 24,000 chargers. According to UtilityDive, the network would be the second-largest in the nation.
Some incentives are already in place. The company received a $20,000-per-vehicle voucher from the Maryland Freedom Fleet Voucher Program to bring the buses to Baltimore.