HI all ...

Just wanted to post a note that I recently started the web site AltFuelPrices.com which shows alternative fuel stations and prices throughout the US, including Biodiesel locations.

Unlike many of the other maps I've seen (including the DOE's map of alternative fuels), this one is clickable and movable. You can also post comments about stations you use for other people to see and learn from.

Cheers,
Todd

Nice map, but it does not seem to have any stations already in it, at least any of the ones I know about.

Are you going to put them in, or are you planning to wait until people do it for you?

It does have a lot of stations in it at the moment, at least all the ones I could find (it has 542 biodiesel stations already in it). What stations are you looking for? Do you have pointers to a site where I can find more?

Also (and I don't know if this applies to the stations you are talking about), I only put in stations that are openly available to the public. Private and government stations are intentionally not in my database since they are not as useful to most people.

This is a good idea, but there are several important things that need to happen to make the website really functional. First, you need to differentiate the various blends and feedstocks, because they DEFINITELY affect pricing. Also, you need to have the pricing be attached to a date, as in $999/gal as of 1/01/01. Third, and this is the real kicker, you need to find a way to get at least most of the stations involved, if there is to be any credibility to your numbers. I looked and saw that California has zero biodiesel stations in your database. That makes the website completely irrelevant to me at this time.

Anyway, I wish you luck, and if you can make progress on these things, especially the last one, I'll enter the information for the 4 stations we supply.

Kumar -

Thanks for the comments. I'm in the process of adding more biodiesel stations now, and hopefully in the next week those will be live. At that point I'll post here again and people can let me know again how I'm doing on "stations near them". I'm willing to put in effort to get the site right, although I think biodiesel is the hardest fuel to get right since there is quite a bit of it around. =)

As for your other comments, it's a tricky problem that I will have to think about (how to tie in prices with multiple grades and still make the interface useful.) With regards to date, prices are already stamped with a date. If you click on one of the stations with a price (try a CNG station, I have lots of prices for those), it tells you when that price was updated and prices that haven't been updated in the last 30 days are shown in italics on the main map to highlight that fact.

Cheers,
Todd

Hi everyone ...

I've added a number of new stations (about 1000 more), so hopefully I now have the stations near you. Let me know if you find that I am still missing stations. I'm happy to add more when I can find them!

Cheers,
Todd

Todd, nice to see updates. A couple things: Yokayo's Ukiah station was listed twice. The price there is $3.89. It's 3.89 at the Solar Living Institute in Hopland as well (a pump we supply).

Kumar -

Thanks for the prices, I've put them in the database. I'm not sure what you mean by the Ukiah station being listed twice ... I looked at the map and at the database and only saw it there once. Can you tell me what you saw that looked like it was in there twice?

Cheers,
Todd

When I look at the map for area code 95482, there's 2 pointy green oval markers right on top of each other in Ukiah. One says our price on it, the other has a question mark. Both, when you click on them, display our info.

The site is starting to look better. I look forward to what it may become.

Kumar -

That's very odd! I can't reproduce what you are seeing on three different computers! If I am very zoomed out, there are two icons that are on top of each other, but one is for the Ukiah Perkins Chevron and they are very distinct when you zoom in.

Chalk it up to weird web browser behavior, perhaps. Thanks for keeping me updated about it, though.

Cheers,
Todd

Todd,

quote:

When I look at the map for area code 95482, there's 2 pointy green oval markers right on top of each other in Ukiah. One says our price on it, the other has a question mark. Both, when you click on them, display our info.

I see the same thing Kumar reports. Foxfire on Mac. FYI.

quote:

Originally posted by Andrew Morris:
Todd,

quote:

When I look at the map for area code 95482, there's 2 pointy green oval markers right on top of each other in Ukiah. One says our price on it, the other has a question mark. Both, when you click on them, display our info.

I see the same thing Kumar reports. Foxfire on Mac. FYI.

I'm also using Firefox on Mac.

Hi again everyone ...

Thanks for persisting. I thought I'd post a couple pictures to make life a little easier. This is what I see when I type in 95482 for the zip code.



If I click carefully on the two different icons, I get one for Yokayo Biofuels and one for Redwood oil company. Zooming in a little further gives me this:



This one shows them very separate, and with the Redwood Oil Company shown. I also use Firefox on the Mac, so if you are seeing something different from me, is there any way you can post a screen shot?

Thanks again,
Todd

No, you're right- it was just an issue of me not being zoomed in enough.

Pearson Fuels
4067 El Cajon Blvd
San Diego, CA 92015

Current prices as of 01/10/2008
B99.9 $3.69
E85 $2.89
Forgot to look at the price for NG and Propane
Natural Gas $???
Propane $???

Hi everyone!

It has been a long time, but I wanted to post here again because I have made some significant updates to www.altfuelprices.com for biodiesel stations and prices.

As requested, I have added the ability to distinguish stations based on what grade of biodiesel is offered (the color of the icon reflects the maximum grade offered at that station) and also to allow differential pricing for the different grades of biodiesel. The popup for any station will show all the prices (and date of update) for the different biodiesel grades.

I just added this feature, and already have the grade information for over 600 biodiesel stations (I have over 1,300 publicly available biodiesel stations in the USA in the database). The pricing information is not as recent, but now that I have these other features, I am hoping that price updates will happen more frequently.

Please head on over and check out biodiesel stations near you and let me know if I have things in your area correct.

Cheers,
Todd