Natural gas refueling at home: The Phill System

The existing infrastructure for gasoline and diesel fuels is immense. There is talk in the news recently of using natural gas as a transportation fuel, but there are few existing stations in the United States at this point in time. Currently the company FuelMaker (which is being acquired by Clean Energy Fuels Corp., CLNE) manufacturers a product called Phill, a home compressed natural gas fueling station. The system installs outdoors or in a garage and can refuel a natural gas powered vehicle over the course of a few hours or ideally, overnight. The system is being utilized by many fleet operations, such as city buses and other government vehicles. Some states like California already have a fairly widespread use of CNG. This home refueling station might be a big step in switching more vehicles to run on natural gas. 

Compressed natural gas may be utilized more as a transportation fuel in the future due to its low cost and domestic availability. The only commercially available consumer CNG vehicle is the Honda Civic GX. There are also many companies which install aftermarket CNG conversions for vehicles currently running on gasoline or diesel. The Phill System may make purchasing a natural gas vehicle more appealing to consumers, especially those who can use the car for commuting. Natural gas vehicles get about the same mileage per gallon equivalent as gasoline vehicles, but natural gas burns much cleaner and costs less. The Phill System is a big step in converting the nation’s vehicles to run on a domestic fuel source.

 

Read more about the Phill system, the Honda Civic GX, and CLNE at…

 

http://www.myphill.com/

http://automobiles.honda.com/civic-gx/

http://www.cleanenergyfuels.com/main.html