— A top engineer with Oshkosh Corporation says operators of electric vehicle fleets can save money on maintenance and other costs over time, helping to offset the significant upfront price tag.
Michael Moore, vice president of engineering at Oshkosh Corp., yesterday discussed the future of EVs in Wisconsin during a panel hosted by UW-Oshkosh, UW-Madison’s Tommy G. Thompson Center on Public Leadership and WisPolitics. It was held on the UW-Oshkosh campus.
According to Moore, an electric garbage truck can cost up to $800,000, compared to around $350,000 for a similar vehicle with an internal combustion engine. But he noted manufacturers can make adjustments to reduce the cost of operation over time, such as reducing the need for changing brakes, oil and filters.
Those changes, coupled with government incentives for the more environmentally friendly machines, can improve the financial picture in the long run, he said. For a garbage truck, which is typically operated over a 14-year period, the overall $2.5 million cost can be reduced by about 14 percent.
“Over a fleet that has 10,000 trucks in it, that’s a pretty significant payback for that operation,” Moore said.
Over the next four years, he said the company plans to spend about $300 million on electrification and another $200 million on autonomous vehicle technology. He noted those investments result in new products, additional jobs and economic growth in the state.
Meanwhile, a top state transportation official expects a legislative solution to charging ownership issues will arise soon as the electric vehicle transition takes hold in Wisconsin. DOT Assistant Deputy Secretary Joel Nilsestuen noted non-utility entities in the state can only charge a fee based on time spent charging.
“With the varying rates that cars accept electricity from the charger, there’s a degree of uncertainty, and so businesses need to be able to measure what they’re selling, so they can make their business decisions accordingly,” he said. “In Wisconsin our statutes currently don’t allow that.”
He explained any company selling electricity is considered a utility and is regulated as such, noting not every gas station owner wants to be regulated to the degree that utilities are. He said he’s optimistic that “in the near-term, that there will be a viable policy solution” to address this challenge moving through the Legislature.
Also during yesterday’s discussion, UW-Oshkosh Director of Parking and Transportation Ben Richardson said the university has seen rising interest in EV charging in recent years. Although the campus didn’t see much interest when chargers were first installed in 2012, he said, that’s changed over time.
“I think education is a big part of how we move forward with the revolution here, to help people understand how these vehicles work,” he said. “We still get questions … in the realm of range anxiety, where people are wondering, ‘How am I going to get from point A to point B?’”
Wisconsin has a plan for using the $78.65 million in federal dollars it will get over the next five years to deploy EV chargers around the state, Nilsestuen noted. Under this plan, 85 percent of people in Wisconsin will live within 25 miles of one of the 62 planned chargers, helping to reduce range concerns for EV owners.
“We have just under 14,000 registered electric vehicles in the state,” he said. “That may sound like a big number, but it really is about 2 percent of the state’s fleet at this point. The thing is, that’s growing very rapidly … about 9 percent each year from 2016 to 2020.”
Still, the current impact of that EV growth on the state’s energy grid is relatively minor, according to an executive with WEC Energy Group. But Dan Krueger, executive vice president of WEC’s infrastructure and generation planning division, said “concentrated need” for fast charging in a small area could mean more substations will be needed in the state.
“It’s all just a matter of coordination and planning, right? … We’re coordinated with the state on the corridor, all those stations, we have them mapped against our distribution system,” he said.
He also touched on a five-year, $50 million WEC pilot program for both residential and commercial customers, which helps offset the cost of installing EV charging stations. He said hundreds of chargers have already been installed through the program.
And though he noted a lot can change in the next five years, Krueger added “it’ll probably be decades before we see a huge transition.”
See more on the DOT plan here: https://wisconsindot.gov/Pages/projects/multimodal/electrification.aspx
— Dem lawmakers are reintroducing a bill aiming to keep nurses in the workforce by ensuring safe staffing levels through minimum nurse-to-patient ratios.
The Nurse Staffing and Patient Protection Act would also require each hospital to submit a staffing plan to the Department of Health Services and includes measures seeking to prevent nurses from being overworked.
Those provisions would:
*Ban mandatory overtime, with limited exceptions;
*Allow nurses to refuse work they believe would compromise patient safety or their nursing license;
*Limit the mandatory length of any shift to 12 hours over a 24-hour period; and
*Prohibit hospitals from retaliating against staff who exercise the rights included in the bill.
Bill coauthor Sen. Chris Larson, D-Milwaukee, argued despite their tax-exempt status, most hospital chains operate exactly like for-profit enterprises.
“The least they can do is safely staff their hospitals and treat their workers like the professionals that they are,” he said yesterday.
He said hospitals have been a roadblock to the proposal in the past.
“They can see that as long as they are not forced to do this, they can drag their feet and pretend that they can’t do it,” Larson said. “So they quietly move around the hallways here and try to prevent this from happening.”
Eric Borgerding, president and CEO of the Wisconsin Hospital Association, in a statement to WisPolitics said Wisconsin hospitals and health systems provide quality care every day.
“While we share concerns about the staffing trends taking place within our industry as our state’s population continues to age, it’s important that we continue to find ways to strengthen our workforce pipeline in a way that does not apply a one-size-fits-all approach to our members,” Borgerding said.
Connie Smith, president of the Wisconsin Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals Local 5000, said hospitals may say they can’t immediately produce more health care workers to meet the proposed standards.
“But they have proven not just to me, but to all of us and to our patients, that they will continue to drive our working conditions and our patients’ health conditions into the ground as long as we let them,” Smith said.
She said the standards need to be changed to ensure workloads are safe and sustainable.
The cosponsorship deadline is Sept. 22.
See the cosponsorship memo: https://legis.wisconsin.gov/senate/07/Larson/media/0zsijsjc/nurse-staffing-co-sponsor-memo.pdf
Watch a video of the news conference: https://wiseye.org/2023/09/13/news-conference-nursing-workforce-shortage-bill-introduction/
<br><b><i>Top headlines from the Health Care Report…</b></i>
— State health officials expect this year’s respiratory virus season to be “roughly similar” to last year, with comparable levels of both COVID-19 and flu activity.
<i>For more of the most relevant news on COVID-19, reports on groundbreaking health research in Wisconsin, links to top stories and more, sign up today for the free daily Health Care Report from WisPolitics.com and WisBusiness.com.</i>
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— The head of the Department of Financial Institutions says state-chartered banks had a “sound financial performance” in the second quarter, despite rising interest rates and other challenges.
The state agency yesterday released the latest bank financial performance data, showing total assets at these banks stood at $66.8 billion at the end of the second quarter. That’s down slightly from $67.9 billion at the same point of 2022.
Meanwhile, net loans rose 4.9 percent to $47.9 billion over the same period, for an increase of $2.3 billion.
“The stability of Wisconsin’s state-chartered banks continues to provide strength to the state and our local communities,” DFI Secretary Cheryll Olson-Collins said in the release.
Meanwhile, second-quarter financial indicators for state-chartered credit unions are also strong, Olson-Collins noted in a separate release. Total assets rose to $62.3 billion for the period, for an increase of $1.5 billion since the end of 2022.
See more bank figures here:
See the credit union figures here: https://dfi.wi.gov/Pages/About/NewsEvents/NewsReleases/20230913SecondQuarterCreditUnionData.aspx
— Generac has announced plans for a new Beaver Dam manufacturing facility, which could employ as many as 400 people.
The Waukesha-based manufacturer of energy technology yesterday said the planned production facility will help meet “growing demand” for the company’s industrial generators.
“The demand for our industrial generators continues on a rapid growth trajectory, and this new facility will help us to best meet the needs of our customers,” said Aaron Jagdfeld, company president and CEO.
The 320,000-square-foot facility will include both manufacturing jobs and office positions, the release shows, and is expected to eventually employ between 350 and 400 workers. The company says it plans to start construction later this year pending local approval, and wrap up that process by early 2025.
See the release: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/generac-announces-proposed-plans-for-a-new-manufacturing-facility-in-beaver-dam-wisconsin-301925308.html
#TOP STORIES#
# Bills favoring Wisconsin utilities killed by out-of-state company, conservative group, former regulator says
# Will Madison Amtrak plans ever leave the station? City officials keep pushing for passenger rail expansion
# Wisconsin settles state Justice Department pollution allegations against 2 factory farms
#TOPICS#
# AGRIBUSINESS
– Wisconsin apple, grape growers report ‘beautiful’ crop this fall despite ongoing drought
– Dairy Symposium to feature DBI initiatives in Wisconsin
http://wisconsinagconnection.com/story-state.php?Id=842&yr=2023
# CONSTRUCTION
– Milwaukee commission votes against demolishing site of historic former gay bar
– Wauwatosa officials approve financing plan for Barrett Lo apartments at Mayfair Mall
– How a $400 million development partnership happened at Mayfair mall
# ECONOMY
– What to know about the Port of Green Bay’s $217 million economic impact
# EDUCATION
– All-In Milwaukee plans program expansion to support 1,000 students
# HEALTH CARE
– How Wisconsin educators are changing the way they teach to help kids’ mental health
# MANAGEMENT
– United Way Fox Cities president & CEO resigns, effective immediately
# MANUFACTURING
– Generac to build plant in Beaver Dam that will employ hundreds of workers
– Generac plans to build plant in Beaver Dam that could employ up to 400 workers
# MEDIA
– Former Badgers radio announcer Mike Lucas said he was ‘kicked to the curb’ by Wisconsin
# POLITICS
– Milwaukee-area business coalition enters fray on Wisconsin elections administrator
# REAL ESTATE
– Tosa approves $58M in city funds for 900 Mayfair apartments, but not without pushback
– Milwaukee developer could buy 25 million square feet across U.S. this year
– Mixed-use Concordia 27 project is 75% complete
# SMALL BUSINESS
– Fast-growing local coffee shop to open cafe at Radio Milwaukee in Walker’s Point
# TECHNOLOGY
– Walsh Construction breaks ground on $1 billion Microsoft data center
# TRANSPORTATION
– Appleton International Airport gets an $8M federal boost for its expansion project
# PRESS RELEASES
<i>See these and other press releases:
https://www.wisbusiness.com/press-releases/ </i>
