Tom Poteet with Mesa Power Solutions
Industrial Talk is onsite at PowerGen and talking to Tom Poteet, Sr. VP with Mesa Natural Gas Solutions about “Meeting the needs of a hungry power market”.
Overview
Tom Poteet from Mesa Power Solutions discussed the company's rebranding to Mesa Power Solutions, emphasizing their role as an electricity provider. They differentiate themselves by offering long-term leases and expert maintenance services. Mesa has upgraded their 22-liter engine from a 350 kW prime power rating to 500 kW. They also announced plans for 2.25 MW units. The conversation highlighted the urgency in the power market, with lead times for transformers being particularly long. Mesa serves various sectors, including data centers and resilience-focused facilities, and Tom emphasized the importance of early project initiation to avoid delays.
Outline
Introduction and Welcome to Industrial Talk
- Scott introduces the episode of Industrial Talk, sponsored by the Propane Education and Research Council, highlighting their commitment to safety training and innovative propane power technology.
- Scott thanks listeners for their support and introduces the broadcast from Power Gen in San Antonio, Texas, mentioning the beautiful Riverwalk location.
- Scott introduces Tom Poteet from Mesa Power Solutions, hinting at a rebrand and expressing excitement about the upcoming discussion.
Tom Poteet's Rebrand and Company Overview
- Scott and Tom discuss the rebranding of Tom's company from Mesa Solutions to Mesa Power Solutions, emphasizing the shift towards being seen as an electricity provider.
- Tom explains the new branding as a way to highlight their expertise in both making and maintaining generators, differentiating them from other companies.
- Scott mentions his involvement with the Society of Maintenance and Reliability Professionals (SMRP) and how Mesa Power Solutions' services align with their focus on asset management and reliability.
- Tom elaborates on the company's long-term lease model, emphasizing the expertise of their technicians in maintaining and solving customer problems.
Differentiation and Market Positioning
- Scott and Tom discuss how Mesa Power Solutions differentiates itself by occupying both halves of the generator market, involving both manufacturing and maintenance.
- Tom explains the company's strategy of assembling, leasing, selling, and maintaining generators, which sets them apart from competitors.
- Scott highlights the value of Mesa Power Solutions' services to customers, reducing the headache of managing generators and ensuring reliable operations.
- Tom mentions the company's upgrades to their physical power output, allowing them to extract more power from the same engine blocks, such as increasing the prime power rating of a 22-liter engine from 350 kW to 500 kW.
Market Demand and Future Plans
- Tom discusses the increasing demand for larger engines and the company's response with designs for 2.25 megawatt units.
- Scott and Tom talk about the fast-paced nature of the power market and the challenges of meeting demand, including the lead time for transformers.
- Tom emphasizes the importance of starting projects early to avoid delays and the increasing urgency from customers to expedite orders.
- Scott and Tom discuss the broad spectrum of customers Mesa Power Solutions serves, including commercial, industrial, and data centers, as well as facilities needing improved resilience.
Conclusion and Contact Information
- Scott and Tom wrap up the conversation, with Speaker 1 expressing excitement about the future of the power generation industry.
- Tom provides his contact information, including his email and LinkedIn profile, for listeners interested in reaching out.
- Scott encourages listeners to visit Power Gen and meet industry professionals like Tom, highlighting the value of conferences for networking and learning.
- Scott concludes the episode by promoting Industrial Talk and its mission to market for industry, inviting listeners to connect and tell their stories on the platform.
If interested in being on the Industrial Talk show, simply contact us and let's have a quick conversation.
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TOM POTEET'S CONTACT INFORMATION:
Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomaspoteet/
Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/mesa-natural-gas-solutions/
Company Website: https://mesapowersolutions.com/
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Transcript
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Propane Education Research Council, Industrial Talk podcast, PowerGen, Mesa Power Solutions, generator maintenance, electricity provider, PowerGeneration, data centers, resilience, transformer lead time, power purchase agreements, commercial industrial, backup systems, power market.
-: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, and let's go. All
right, welcome to Industrial Talk. Thank you very much for joining the number one industrial related podcast in the universe that celebrates you, industrial professionals all around the world. Yes, you are bold, brave, you dare greatly, you innovate, you collaborate, you're solving today's problems each and every day. You're amazing. That's why you're the heroes of this story. Thank you very much for your continued support of this platform. We are broadcasting on site, PowerGen. It is in San Antonio, Texas. It's beautiful, in fact. fact, my room is right on the Riverwalk. Put this on your calendar to just visit San Antonio in a hot seat. He's been in the hot seat before. Tom is in the hot seat.
Hello,
and his company now. This is a rebrand, Mesa Power Solutions. We're going to be talking about, well, what's happening with Mesa? So, let's get a kayaking. Yeah. Oh, I get.. I'm looking forward to this.
Me too.
And it was so cool. I bet you, I bet you, you look in your, your handy dandy email. I bet you went to junk, whatever. That, that email I sent you, I was all giddy. I said, hey, I could talk to Tom.
Yeah,
Tom just ghosted me.
I remember one time last when you interviewed me last year, you said something about, you know, what is it about? What do you like about PowerGen? And I said, well, one thing is, it's good to see old industry acquaintances and stuff like that, and now you're an old industry acquaintance,
old rusty nail, but you gotta admit, do you find that this year's event does it seem bigger?
I can't really tell. You
can't,
no,
but you were in doubt. I can't even remember. Were we in Dallas
last
year? Yeah, it was in Dallas, I believe. So,
is that where I talked
before?
Yeah, it seems like to me it's about the same size.
Does it really? It just seems bigger. I don't know. It's a topic of conversation.
It's a big show.
It is, and it's the.. it is cool to be able to walk the floor and to be able to just sort of see the stuff, and yours.. I'm going to be coming by your site and see the stuff over there, which is pretty cool, big stuff. How do you? Before I digress, which I am digressing right now, before it didn't make any sense. So I'm digressing. How, how does companies like yours and the other companies that have big impressive generators and engines that are out there on the floor. How do you differentiate yourself? I don't know,
that is a really good because it's
all dazzling.
The way, the way I usually try to explain it to people is in the, in the category of generators that we make, there's there's sort of a, I think of it as a circle. You can say that the top half of the circle is occupied by people who make generators and sell them to whoever wants to buy them, and it might be a company that puts generators on rent or something. And the folks who only do that, they might make it, they might have a good design, but they never really learn anything about the performance of their equipment, because they're not the ones working on them.
Okay, the
other half of the circle is people who don't make generators, but they buy them from wherever they can, and you know, put them on rent. Well, those folks, you know, some of them will do a good job, but they never really become experts at any one particular design. So, in my opinion, it takes them longer, probably, to do maintenance, to fix things, to handle the customer's problems, and what has differentiated us is we occupy both halves of that circle, we assemble them, we lease them, we sell them, and we maintain them.
Well, you do, you do throw out a maintenance component.
Yeah, we, that's our favored model is. To have long-term leases for the equipment that we produce, and everybody says this, but in our case it really is true that our technicians are so good at maintaining our units and solving customers' problems that that's how we differentiate ourselves. If you say, you know, if you got to find somebody who can make it and make it work, go to Mesa. See,
I, I'm fortunate enough to work with an organization called SMRP, which is a Society of Maintenance and Reliability Professionals. Got it? It's an organization, and they're focused on, of course, managing those assets, reliability, applying the tools and techniques associated with that. That is good. What you guys provide is that ability to be for me. Me, let's say I'm Acme cup, uh, customer, I could go to you and, and be assured that I don't have to do, I don't have to have the drama, I, that's a, that's a valuable asset for me, it's meaningful to my organization and my operations, and I know that I don't have a headache because it comes through, see, I like that, I like that, all right. Last year, Dallas, you were Mesa Solution. What were your basic solutions?
Yeah, now you're not. Yeah, so
talk to us.
Since we, we talked last, we've done a bit of a rebrand of the company. They all, the people are still in place, but we've, we've rebranded to Mesa Power Solutions. We've always seen ourselves as more than just somebody who leases generator. Yeah, we've always seen ourselves as an electricity provider, because of the extreme amount of effort that we put into not only making the best product, but maintaining it in the best way, and having the best people work on them, and so we just wanted to put the idea of power a little more up front, so Mesa Power, Mesa Power Solutions, just wanted people to immediately get the idea, I can call these guys to get some electricity, so that's been a big deal, it was more work for it in our marketing department than anybody else, because you know to get everybody's email and the website and all the marketing material to hit the same month and be synchronized was a lot of work.
So, is your URL now Mesa Power Solutions,
as
opposed to Mesa Solutions,
yeah,
you know, it's interesting when, when you told me that, I said he just slipped up power in the middle of that
stream,
they actually, I gotta look at my business card, they actually website is Mesa Power solutions.com yeah, hold it, yeah, but your email is still Mesa Power, yeah, but before it was Mesa, something else, so it's all
so it's a good thing, good thing that you guys sort of tighten it up,
yeah,
yeah, make sure that that messaging gets out there properly,
yeah, so it's been a really good avenue and a lot of good conversation,
yeah, I bet.
Starting, we've also another thing that we've, that's new, unrelated to that, since, since you and I talked last, is the units that we have, that that you saw last year, there's been some upgrades to the physical power available out of the same engine blocks, so you know it's, we have, we have different sizes that we make in a certain class of generator based on a on a certain category of engines,
yeah.
The biggest engine in that category is a 22 liter, but we've been able to get more power out of that 22 liter block, so what used to be have a prime power rating of 350 kw, now has a prime power rating of 500
kw. Oh,
that much.
Yeah,
you were able to extract that much more out of that.
Yeah, this work, work around the engine block, work around the engine control module.
Didn't know that.
Yeah, so that's
pretty cool.
Yeah, it's been amazing, and so you know, I used to say, if people said, "I need a megawatt of power, we think we'd say, "Okay, well, that's three of these units. Now it's two of those units, see? So that's big.
That's now now, how do you price
it? Still, you know, per kw, it's still, you know it's linear,
right?
Another big thing is we're also some of our customers says even, even yet, we still need larger engines, so we're now we have a design and we're taking orders for two point 2.5 megawatt units, so you know they're pretty large, it's about. A good solution for decades, when the utilities overall demand was growing about 1% per year, because you could do those things, and you could delay a capital project at a substation by, you know, four or five, six years, depending on what you did, but you know, people are putting in loads now that are far bigger than subs, the substations that you and I remember,
yeah, and they want it yesterday,
yeah. There's no time to lollygag, indeed they do. And what's funny, on you know, some of these folks that are doing the large projects, they get that the supply chain for PowerGeneration equipment is tight, but every day it becomes more real to them, you know. People, there's so many decisions, and so many.. there's so many financial approvals, so many logistics decisions that have to take place to get a dentist, a data center at a piece of property that you know people, same people over and over again, are saying, well, okay, if we delay ordering a week, does it just add a week at the end? Well, you know, eventually you have to say, well, if you delay a week or a month, now it might add six months at the end,
we and we talk about transformers, we take them for granted. Transformers, there is transformer, right? The lead time for transformer is ridiculous. They're not just
their way out.
We're not just sitting in a yard, just waiting and collecting dust. Yeah, no, you, you just. there's just a lot of interesting dynamics taking place in the power market, that and again it seems like it's at this mad, just this super fast pace.
we can do that by the end of:yeah,
and it's, it's only gonna, it's not gonna get better soon.
So, let's talk a little bit about the future. It does, does Mesa satisfy sort of multi level of the market, are you just sort of focused on data centers, but no, where do you, where do you find yourself sort of, you know, waiting in the pool,
so it's really quite a spectrum of commercial, industrial, and under, under those data centers is kind of a subset of that, but in the midst of just needing some power, there's still a lot of companies out there that want to improve their resilience, so
yeah,
maybe a facility that stores frozen fruit, food that's, you know, the facilities as big as this expo hall, they, if they have an outage, power outage, and you know, temperature drops three or four degrees in there, or at a grocery store, where if they're out for 20 or 30 minutes, they have to start throwing food away, so a lot of the bigger grocery store chains are starting to really upgrade their backup systems, yeah. And so we're getting into that as well,
yeah. There's just so much, you're not retiring anytime soon, are you?
So I keep running into friends from high school that ask me that, and I say, so far I've been able to avoid
it, yeah. Well, why would you, especially now, and especially with your, you know, your power gin whiskers, yeah. Because I mean, it's just really an exciting time. It's never been this way,
yeah.
You know, I was, I was negotiating power purchase agreements in Southern California Edison, and I was sort of like this, you know, bananas of opportunity, but it was just power purchasing, you just power, you know, you just.. this is different.
I made the mistake last week. I was in a meeting, and some, some, a new customer request was coming in, and so I was categorizing it in my head and out loud to the people that were in the room, and I think I made the mistake of telling my boss, this job is so addictive. It
is, it is what I mean, really is. Yeah, I just think that this is such an amazing time for for this industry, and it's way above my pay grade, because I am, I'm stuck in the old way of thinking, where it's quite linear, you know, my PowerGeneration, my transmission substation, step it down, out to distribution, down, step it down, get it into the household, or wherever it goes.
Yeah, the big message I keep trying to get out to the people that are doing these projects is, if you say you keep saying you need to go faster, go faster, take risk out of your schedule by starting your schedule.
I agree with that. All right, what's the best way to get a hold of Tom
Thomas dot cotix at Mesa power.com
and you're out on LinkedIn.
Oh, yeah,
yeah, just, just so that we're all clarified by something. I sent him an email, so if they have a unique email system, and it might just block you, so it's just a play, reach out to him on LinkedIn, too. He's out there, Tom. You're always an amazing conversation.
Thanks very much. A
lot of depth right there. All right, once again, we're going to be broadcasting here at Power Gym. It is in San Antonio. We're going to have all the contact information for Tom out on Industrial Talk, because he's that good. You need to reach out to him. All right, we're going to wrap it up on the other side. Stay tuned, we will be right back.
You're listening to the Industrial Talk Podcast Network.
Yeah, that was Power Gin. You can tell a lot of stuff going on at PowerGen. If there is a topic of conversation that is happening out there in industry, it's talking about PowerGeneration. How do we satisfy the increase in demand for power across the board? Of course, we're talking about data centers. Yes, but there's such a huge demand for power all across industry, and there you go, Tom and Team Mesa Natural Gas Solutions. Yes, they're leading the way. They've got solutions, they're solving problems, and I'm telling you right now, you need to get to PowerGen, and the reason you need to get to PowerGen is because it's cool. That's one thing you get to meet cool people like Tom, that's another thing. But, man, is it a symphony for your eyes, man? You're just wandering around, and you're like, "Whoa, check that out.
Why?
That's why conferences are so cool. They get to sort of look and kick the tires and chit chat about a topic that you like with people that are passionate that want to solve your problems. Anyway, that's industry. That's Tom. All the contact, as I said, poor Tom will be out on Industrial Talk, so reach out to him, find out more, and find out more about Mesa Natural Gas Solutions. Yeah, right there. Industrial Talk is here for you. Here's the deal, we market for industry, that's what we do. We tell the story of industry, that's what we do. We want you to succeed, so we have this disability to be able to tell that story to market your solutions in such a way that it resonates. Go out to Industrial Talk.com right there. It's easy peasy. Click connect. Let's have a conversation, at a minimum. At a minimum, let's have a conversation and tell your story on Industrial Talk. You need to do that. All right, be bold, be brave. Dare greatly, hang out with Tom, change the world. We're going to have another great conversation coming from Bower Gin shortly, so stay tuned.
About the author, Scott
I am Scott MacKenzie, husband, father, and passionate industry educator. From humble beginnings as a lathing contractor and certified journeyman/lineman to an Undergraduate and Master’s Degree in Business Administration, I have applied every aspect of my education and training to lead and influence. I believe in serving and adding value wherever I am called.
