Lawmaker wants USPS electric push
US Representative Jose E. Serrano introduced a bill intending to get USPS to switch its huge fleet of light vehicles to electric, partly to help clean up the air and also to help recharge the nation’s electric grid, the Washington Post reported. Serrano’s bill would eventually give $2bn to the Energy Department and Postal Service to convert current mail trucks or manufacture new ones that use vehicle-to-grid technology or V2G, as it’s known, the newspaper said.
The Postal Service runs about 220,000 vehicles. The fleet travels more than 1.2bn miles each year and used 121m gallons of fuel in 2008, the Washington Post said.
Serrano is chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that handles USPS matters.
The technology allows electricity to flow from plug-in electric or battery-powered vehicles to power lines, feeding excess electricity to the vehicles when they’re not in use. In this case, postal vehicles would become temporary storage units for electricity. When necessary, power grids could retrieve electricity from the vehicles, the newspaper said.
The Postal Service already is testing several alternative-fuel vehicles, Sue Brennan, spokeswoman, said, according to the Post.
