Page 111 - Peterson 85 Years and Going Strong
P. 111

When the drilling is finished, a well-stimulation system shoots high-pressure liquid down the well- bore to crack up the shale further. That liquid slur- ry contains sand and chemicals that are forced at high pressure into the rocks, which holds them open so the trapped oil and gas can be released.
The Clean Fleet system replaced fourteen Cat 3516 diesel engines with electric pumps powered by three to four natural gas Solar T60 turbines. For Peterson, the job started back in June 2014. So- lar only had two of the three required turbines in stock. Since it would take a year to build another one, they opted to rent the third unit from Peter- son. “Our turbines were being used in a brand- new technology,” says Pleus, who spent time on site back in 2015, watching them monitor progress on large computer screens. “That Clean Fleet sys- tem working in West Virginia is Serial No. 1. And they’re busy building a second one. This is one of the most exciting prospects in the mobile turbine business today.”
BIG RISKS, BIG REWARDS
“I always believed that this thing could get real- ly big—even when the whole industry was on its tail,” says Gene Hamilton, who has developed on- the-job friendships around the world. That’s the entrepreneurial spirit that has built Peterson into what it is today. Diving into the mobile turbine business back in 2000 was a huge risk—at $2.5 million a pop—in an unproven market. “Nobody else was offering rental turbines in that size class. Without the full support of Peterson’s top brass, it would have never gotten off the ground,” says Hamilton. But taking risks is a corporate trait that has propelled Peterson into many new opportuni- ties as solution providers.
In July 2018, Peterson Power sold its turbine fleet to Energy Rental Services in Texas where the oil and gas industry is booming. “The benefits we derived from our experience with turbines still continues,”
Gene Hamilton at a cogeneration site in San Jose, California in 2019
says Hamilton. “Many of the skills we learned are still serving us well. The innovative ideas and lessons we learned in international contracts and taxes, risk management, selling to a global market, and maintenance and operations around the globe are helping us sell Cat gas engines into cogenera- tion and utility markets both locally and outside our territory. All that experience has grown our reputation of excellence with customers both here and thousands of miles from home.”
Peterson still furnishes turbine power upon cus- tomer request. But the focus has changed with the market demands. Indeed, Peterson was the largest power systems distributor in North America in 2019. “We have twelve sales reps and forty engi- neers and project managers around the country,” says Hamilton. “Forty to sixty percent of the con- tent for our projects is Cat equipment; the rest comes from other suppliers. We have employees in North Carolina, Alabama, Texas, Nevada, and Idaho because 60-70 percent of our sales are out- side our traditional territory.” That’s the power of flexibility and listening to the customer.
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