Ben Pulley with Caterpillar, Inc.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Propane Education Research Council, power generation, Caterpillar, mission critical, backup power, multi-fuel, hydrogen engine, microgrid, customer challenges, energy solutions, industrial professionals, power Gen, renewable energy, distributed energy, reliability.

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This episode of Industrial Talk is brought to you by the propane Education and Research Council committed to advancing safety training and innovative propane power technology across industries. Learn more at propane.com

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The propane Education Research Council leading the way in cleaner, safer and more efficient energy future.

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Welcome to the Industrial Talk podcast with Scott MacKenzie. Scott is a passionate industry professional dedicated to transferring cutting-edge industry focused innovations and trends while highlighting the men and women who keep the world moving. So put on your hard hat, grab your work boots,

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and let's go all right once again. Welcome to Industrial Talk. Thank you very much for joining the number one industrial related podcast in the universe that celebrates you industry professionals all around the world because you're bold, brave, you dare greatly, you innovate, you collaborate. You are solving problems each and every day. And speaking of solving problems, if you're not here at power Gen in San Antonio, you're not solving problems because there are tons of problem solvers here. That is an incredible conversation. We've had a number of great chats with incredible professionals focused on your success. So put this on your calendar for next year. We're also brought to you by the propane Council. I'm telling you, they got a booth over here. They've got great people, and you know, one of the individuals that is in the propane area that that booth. His name is Ben caterpillar. He's in the hot seat. Let's get cracking. It's always funny when I have these conversations. Ben is, how do I roll it? How do I how do I just sort of chirp it out? How do I make it seamless? It's always a challenge. But it's, it's, it's always fun, especially especially here, you know if, if you wander around, would you have? You have you wandered around?

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I have, yeah, I've had a little bit of time to get away from the booth and actually walk around the show. It's great to talk to people, understand what their issues are. You mentioned exactly, trying to solve their problems. Yes, that dovetails really well. Because I don't know if you realize this, that caterpillar now has a new CEO. Just finished our 100th year anniversary and changed. We actually created our new mission statement, which is, what is it solving our customers toughest challenges, seats, I mean, just really right into that. That's our purpose.

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Now, I believe that's That's brilliant. It's simply brilliant. You know, it's nothing, nothing lofty, nothing, you know, people can put their arms and heads around the fact that you're solving problems, and especially today in the power generation world, the market is just hungry. They're just ravenous for power, not in a few months. They want it yesterday. They want to figure it out, and they they need trusted companies to be able to help them along on their journey. Yeah, of course. Caterpillar, by the way, you guys have a lot of when you rolled out the caps the caterpillar cats, you know how popular those caps are people wear those all the time. Oh, sure. Oh yeah, they do all right. Before we get chirping about Caterpillar, what you guys are doing? Give us a little background on who Ben is, sort of and by the way, are you having a good show?

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I'm having an excellent show. I just love talking to people, understanding them. That's where I've actually moved my entire career is identifying roles that are going to talk to customers, talk to people, to understand what their issues are. Have been through all different areas of caterpillar. I don't know if the people on this show realize how broad caterpillar is.

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It's gargantuan, yeah, from

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doing construction equipment, to mining, to electric power to transportation. I mean, we are in all facets of this, so that's where, when we talk about the power industry, yes, we are helping these customers here solve their problems by producing power, but then we're also a consumer of it, right? We're using our electric machines, our electric mining equipment, talking to our mining customers, and say, Hey, we have an electric mining truck. How do we get power for that electric mining truck? How do we electrify your entire site so we can have these large machines in the middle of nowhere, be electric vehicles? And Did, did

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you did? I mean, you got to share with me, have you? Have you been out to those mines and seen those? Oh, yeah, massive dunk.

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So this is like, Yeah, I've been I was before this. I was in the mining group. We had it our leading, our engineers for our electric rope shovels. These are huge machines, you know, larger than three story. House, no, and they are just scooping up 120 tons of dirt in one scoop. So it is done. Come on. So every, every 30 seconds, picking up 120 tons and dumping it into a truck, and that truck, every 90 seconds, is moving away, another one's replacing it. Just hate

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to go down this road, but I have to go down this road. Did you talk about the maintenance of those assets, the reliability of those assets, the digitization the data that you're pulling, and being able to do that? Because that's a harsh environment.

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It is. I mean, maintenance is a huge thing, especially with our mining customers. It is a partnership to understand that, especially with our Gen sets, again, we have our distributors that will partner with our customers. Some customers love the DIY approach, where they want to perform their own maintenance, yeah, we definitely encourage that provide them with the tools to that. We also have customers that are saying, hey, I want to focus on my business. This power generation here is a necessity that is mission critical to my purpose. But that's not my focus. That's not where I want to worry about. Hey, Caterpillar dealer, take care of that. For me. I'd love to sign a 10 year contract, ltsa, long term service agreement, where I just know that you guys are going to take care of it. I'm going to have Yeah, my uptime, so that way I can go about my purpose, whether it be data centers or whether that be a grocery store. Yeah, these people are all focused on, hey, this is my purpose for this company. And yes, I need this power to be reliable. I want to have that Gen set there to make sure I have that guaranteed power. Yeah, but I want not have to worry about it, and that's where Caterpillar comes in for, especially these mission critical applications where life is on the line. With hospitals, where they have to have that power. For a manufacturing plant, where power down means that they are scrapping inventory, they are upsetting their processes. They have to restart everything. Could take three, four hours to restart our own machines, and they can't afford that downtime. So that's where they're going to look for,

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you know, the one thing that, and, of course, caterpillars and everything but, but one of the things that that always fascinates me, which is a high risk, is, is food refrigeration, absolutely. And, and having that ability, that redundancy, to be able to say, Yeah, power went out, but we're not out because the spoilage or the risk of spoilage. I mean, it's, it's one of those nine to go and these warehouses. It's not, not just a little refrigerator, it's, it's the size of this conference area, right? And is, and I know caterpillars got to be in that.

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Oh, absolutely, absolutely, a lot of these manufacturing plants they are operating. You mentioned food, I like to go back to the dairy industry, because I think people can gravitate towards that. There you go. And if you think about it, hey, that farmer milks those cows every morning, right? You know, they're bringing that they're putting that milk in there. Well, that milk has got to go somewhere. It goes to a yogurt factory, a dairy factory, yeah, well, they're bringing in truck after truck after truck, yeah, if that facility were to go dark and they say, uh, trucks, I can't take your milk, yeah, they got to dump it down the drain, yeah, they can't do anything with it, and the cows are just the milk's gonna keep coming, right? What? Oh, and they're just gonna have to use it. So that's an awesome industry where they are able to through having backup generation keep going through, regardless of what happens in the surrounding community, they can keep that supply chain just flowing. You know, it's interesting,

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because we're here at power Gen. And we were talking about power generation, but one of the things that you mentioned briefly in the beginning was just the the breadth and width of what Caterpillar can bring to the table, and for solving problems there that it Do you find it would bring comfort to me to know that I can, I have a relationship with cat, and I can, pretty much it might not be, I might be, hey, I'm using your power generation solution, but I have this other sort of weird thing, and be able to ping you and have that access to that knowledge That might not be yours but others within that organization that would bring comfort,

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yeah, no, we have a lot of customers that do appreciate that, hey, regardless of what they need, yeah, that they're able to go to caterpillar. And that's one thing that even will focus on power generation here. Throughout all these talks that you hear are the conferences, everyone's saying, hey, there's no just one solution that's going to take us through this. It's we need all the solutions, right? That's the only way that this is going to work, is by having all the solutions. And that's where I'm really proud to work for Caterpillar, because from a power generation standpoint, we have all the solutions with that broadest product portfolio. Of energy products, whether you want turbines, whether you want diesel generators, whether you want gas generators, whether you want battery storage, yes, you know it's all available from one source, so you don't have to worry about, hey, I'm going to buy this from app. Yeah, yeah. Part A, this from cart B. I hope they work together, right? And if, if something goes wrong, who do I called supplier a or supplier B, in this case, is just hey, I've got one phone number. I just call my cat dealer, and they will come out and diagnose what the issue is going on with the system and the again, it goes back to solving those customers challenges. We can understand, talk to that customer, understand what their challenge is, and work with them to say, hey, for your application and for what you project to do in the future, this is the best solution for you. Yeah, we are never forcing a customer to say, Well, hey, this is the product I have. So you should do this, even if it's not the best product for them. That's where I really like working with Caterpillar, that we can actually identify who that our customer is, what their challenges are, and what solution is going to be the best fit for them, depending on what they're trying to

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accomplish, see, and a lot of the conversations that I've had here, fortunately, have been around just the the velocity, the dynamics of The market and the demands that are being imposed on the market and everything that needs to be done yesterday, it would seem to me that it would be comforting to know that in this chaotic world and it's exciting. Don't get me wrong, if I was young, it would just be the place to be, just because it's so exciting, but to be able to just know that in that chaos, I have a, you know, a partner, that be able to do that, that just makes sense. From that perspective, we talk about market, what are we what are we looking at? From cats perspective, as you deliver generation solutions, what, what is sort of that focus. What do you see in the marketplace?

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Well, we definitely see the demand increasing. We've made huge investments. We're increasing our capacity for our large block engines. We're increasing our capacity for our solar turbines, our turbine product, our gaseous turbines products as well. And as we look to the future, we understand that there's some weariness, you know, customers are saying, Oh, if I'm going to buy this asset, am I, is it going to fit the needs that I need 510, years?

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Yeah, it's got to be scalable. It's got to have that go ahead, yeah.

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And that's where it is exciting that, you know, we've demonstrated through projects doing 100% hydrogen engine right now. That engine up in St, Paul, Minnesota, they've said, Hey, we're gonna, yes, it's demonstrated it can run 100% hydrogen. We're gonna use it as natural gas right now, as a beaker. So they're having that flexibility that you could buy a Gen set now today, knowing that, hey, maybe in the future, I may want to run it on hydrogen. Okay, you know, blend in 25% hydrogen, yeah,

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see, you're bringing up an interesting point, and that is multi fuel being able to, I look at it like, like an arbitrage. So if natural gas has got a good price point versus Diesel, whatever the fuel strategy, to be able to do that would be a benefit. And plus, from that, that resilient perspective, being able to say, yeah, yeah, let's use propane. Okay, there is great, you know, things like that.

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No, that's an excellent point. You know, yes, I'm right. Now we've demonstrating our our unit at the at the perk booth, the propane, yeah, education, research, council booth, that unit is both natural gas or propane. So if a customer is there, maybe they're in the middle of nowhere today. But you know how building and new neighborhoods are being built? Yeah? Maybe my cabin out in the woods needs to run on propane today. You know, 510, years ago, maybe they'll run away, they'll run a natural gas line. I want to have the confidence to say, yep, now I've got a natural gas option here that I can run to my house and run it off natural gas, and you've got the flexibility of using that same unit, and just still, they'll come out and change the fuel over. And they can have that confidence. But yeah, with the propane on the unit, and that's a huge win for a lot of customers that may not be as comfortable with diesel and having a refueling plan they would rather just have. Hey, I'll have my one propane tank. I'm also using it for cooking. I'm also using it for heat, yeah, and I can also yes, for my generator.

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Yeah, that that's, that's a real good point. You're absolutely spot on. On that one. Does this just popped into my head. Does cat provide household generation?

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So we go down to 20 kW. So that's the lowest we go. And these are industrial units. Yeah, that's what I thought aimed at. Yeah. They would be more aimed at a a small facility that maybe has, you know, heck when we had, maybe it's an awful term, but back in the covid vaccine time when they had to have refrigeration at all these little places, because it had to be frozen to keep its shelf stable, you know, all those places had to have refrigeration. Blood banks, especially, you know, dialysis centers are that are dealing with blood, yeah, they all have refrigeration. They all need to have backup power to make sure that they're there. That's where we really, you know, these mission critical places are where we really shine with our product. You can if you have a very a larger place, an apartment building, a senior home, old age home, those places as well. Really looking for backup power. We have installed our Gen set behind single family residences, but you're really looking for a little bit larger facility. Or, Hey, if you have a house that has three air conditioning units, you're looking at electric vehicle charging. You're gonna get higher loads. Yeah, that's where you might look at having a slightly bigger unit. But these are industrial

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Have you had conversations around micro grid? Absolutely, yeah. Where you're you're taking a neighborhood and and you're in essence, creating a power island. So you've been having those conversations.

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So when we look at a micro grid, Caterpillar defines a micro grid as, actually, you know, any multiple generation sources. So we actually, we have our our our proving grounds out in the middle of Arizona, was our first my, you know, microwave, where we actually put since it was in the middle of nowhere, it needed to be, yeah, without any utility service, we wanted to have power there. So we started with just with three Gen sets there. And those diesel Gen sets ran 24/7, but now over time, as the company has developed over the last 20 years, we brought on, hey, we put battery there. We put solar there. We keep increasing the solar amount as we need more and more electrical. Needs to test all these electric mining equipment, and we've created a full micro grid there as a demonstration for communities or for different companies or different minds to come out and see what a world class micro grid looks like and

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providing all those products. See, here's the interesting part, and because there's such a greater demand for power, so there's this,

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this focus on trying to satisfy that demand.

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And then the the the

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distributive energy side too, and is selling into the utilities. There's a lot of dynamics taking place in that. But I think because being an old utility guy, the thought of having distributive energy on that side of the you know, the meter is just unheard of. It would always be, it would always be sent to the the grid. And of course, there would be that power purchase agreement associated with that, but I think that that's just going to continue to increase and be the norm.

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There's a lot of customers there that are wanting to be just in charge of their own power, that they're wanting to understand, hey, nope, I've got my facility. I've got my own power. I don't have to worry about, is the power going to come from the utility? Are they going to meet my needs that I can supply that myself? And look at that and we've had and when we talk about microgrids and talk about communities through our cat Foundation, which is our philanthropic arm, we're bringing electricity to islands in Africa and communities that have never had power, brilliant, but which is bringing its own set of challenges. Because if you ask somebody that's never had electricity before, how much power do you think you need? They have no idea. They have no concept of

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how much we don't know. Have that. We don't have any insights into the demand.

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So our challenge is, there is that to, as you said, Build modular structures, to say, hey, we're going to start with this, but as soon as they get a flavor of having lights, someone's going to say, well, I'd love to have a hot plate, right? Yeah? Food? Yeah, I'd love to have hot water Absolutely. And now you're like, Okay, well, now our demand is going up and up. How do we expand? Yes, and that's where I think a lot of these, even businesses, are understanding, hey, yes, today, here is my size. Yeah, but what? What am I going to need five to 10 years from now? Right? Am I going to expand? Am I going to put in more lots or my, you know, whether it be Walmart or grocery stores doing their last mile delivery? Yeah, in my neighborhood of Houston, all of my Amazon trucks are electric vehicles. So it's like, okay, well, those are got to charge somewhere, right? And having all those charge. At once, draws a lot

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of power. And you know, the real interesting component about it is the speed. It's the it's they want it now they need it now. Look at that. It's like those Amazon trucks. Hey, I got them right here. I need to be able to put them in. What are you going to do about it? But your point about providing power solutions in remote areas in remote countries, to be able to bring them up to you know, do you guys also have to we got the generation, we got the agility, but we still need to deliver it some way, shape, form. Do you guys work with companies to create the the infrastructure?

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So that's where a lot of our caterpillar dealer really shines, right? So Caterpillar corporate is bringing the actual products there. We're bringing expertise, and then our distributors are the ones bringing the installation services, yeah, to to bring that full solution, that turnkey site, you know, to a customer to say, hey, you know, this is what you may you may need, whether it be your electrical installation or, you know, they're going to work with, you know, a few general contractor, you know, they'll do, they'll do whatever the customer wants, to whatever level they need to have, as far as support,

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just, just between you and me, that's way above my pay grade, that is just, it just, is a content And to your mission solving problems. It's just once you make that decision of saying, we want to put power over here or here that is needed, it just starts to pull on, like, that's a challenge, that's a challenge. Let's overcome that, and then you just keep on working through it. That's That's amazing stuff. Wow, I like this conversation. You, You were wonderful, and it's really quiet out here.

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No, it's a wonderful show. We're just getting started. There's a little bit excitement here. Ready to go, and we're it opens up a chat to run.

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Yeah, you came here at nine. So you're, you're amazing. How, Ben, how do people get a hold of you? They're saying we want to know more about caterpillar. We want to know about Ben. Yeah, I want to know him because he's a nice guy.

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Yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn or their cat.com you can find all about caterpillar. There it is.

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You're listening to the Industrial Talk Podcast Network.

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Yep, power Gen. That's where that was taking place. Ben, pulley, right there. Caterpillar, so I'm going over there. So this is always the case, as you can tell by the sponsor of this particular show. Yeah? Propane, education, research, Council, yep. Yeah. Check them out, by the way. Yeah, go over to their booth. Yeah, it's, it's really, if you're in the world of just power generation, you need to go over there, you guys just wander around and look at all the solutions. They're an amazing group. And of course, Caterpillar, well, what can you say about caterpillar? They had, they had a unit there. They had, they had, you can touch it, and you can poke on it, and you can see what it's all about the power generation. Business and industry is just booming, and we have people like Ben and others coming up with solutions Caterpillar, of course, they're global, right? Coming up with solutions to feed the market with power, not just any power, not just like, yeah, here's power, right? No, power that meets the needs of the market. And it is an amazing conversation to have, as you can tell it's it's cool stuff you can't complain about that. All of Ben's Converse contact information will be out on Industrial Talk. So fear not. Reach out to him. Find out more our generation. It's where it's at. You know you you need Ben and other Caterpillar Sherpas to help you along on that journey. You need power. Yeah, reach out to Ben. He'll set you straight. Industrial Talk again, is here for you industrial professionals, here's my beep one. You need to tell your story because you need to attract that talent for you know that that industrial talent that you need to keep you to be a resilient business, that's what you need tell your story. I make it easy. You go out to Industrial Talk. There it is, right. There. Connect with me and we have a conversation. It's just that easy. You need to do it. And then what happens? I'll give you all the content that comes from the conversation. And then if you do, if you have a marketing group, they have all this content that they can sit there and share out on a social it's great. If you don't, you can just ask of us at Industrial Talk. We were here to help too. We'll take that content, we'll continue to share it. We'll do everything we can to give you the greatest attention that you need to be successful. We're here to ensure that you succeed. You need to succeed. You just do go out to Industrial Talk. All right. Ben is the man you need to make a priority next year to go to Power Gen it's growing in size. The conversation is never failing. So be bold. Be brave. Dare greatly. Hang out with Ben. Change the world. We're gonna have another great conversation shortly. So stay tuned.