Luis Javier Garcia de Rozas – Guascor Energy

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Barcelona Cybersecurity Congress, Industrial Talk podcast, Power Gen, energy sector, gas engines, diesel engines, biogas, synthetic gas, power generation, data centers, IPPs, cogeneration, after-sales services, vertical integration, market demand.

00:00

All right. Before we get into the conversation, I want you to be aware of a conference that you need to put on your calendar, and you have time. It is the Barcelona Cybersecurity Congress. It is necessary. You need to up your cybersecurity game. You're connected. You need to make sure that you're protected right here. This event, Barcelona Cybersecurity Congress. It is November 3 through the fifth. You have time, November 3 through the fifth this year in Barcelona. And I'm telling you right now, the team at Farah who put this particular Congress on the best. You will not be disappointed, and you know what else you get to do? You get to network with some of the best cybersecurity professionals from around the world. You need to do this. You need to put this one on your calendar. All of the contact, all of the information is out on Industrial Talk. I'm going to be there. I'm going to be broadcasting. I'm going to be talking cybersecurity with the best in the world. So be there. Put this one on your calendar. That is November 3 through the fifth. I'll see you there.

01:16

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

01:34

right, once again, welcome to Industrial Talk, the number one industrial-related podcast in the universe that celebrates you, industry professionals all around the world. You are bold, brave. You dare greatly. You innovate. You collaborate. You're solving problems each and every day. That's why you are the heroes in this story. We are broadcasting on site. PowerGen. This is San Antonio, Texas. If you've never been to San Antonio, you need to be here. It's a pretty nice place. Great restaurants. We had a we had a great drink last night. It was nice. Anyway, you need to be here, and if you're in the world of power generation, if you're in the world of supporting that particular industry, this is the event for you. You need to be a part of this. So look, if you're not here now, be here next year. You will not be disappointed. Do you know why you will not be disappointed? Because you get to meet individuals like here it is, baby, Luis J. Garcia de Rozas. Did I get it? Check it out. Yeah, I'm not going to even try the name. Energy. You know I'm butchering it, but there he is because he's a kind gentleman, and he knows that I'm trying. How are you doing?

02:48

I'm doing well, thank you.

02:49

Yeah,

02:49

yeah.

02:50

You having a good conference?

02:51

Yeah, arrived last night, and where did you go

02:55

last night?

02:56

Well, we arrived from Madrid. We've been flying from Madrid, which

03:00

is which is not bad. It's a

03:02

nice place.

03:03

Yeah, yeah, I do. Arrived

03:04

in Dallas, and we've been driving this morning, early this morning.

03:08

You know, you know what? I I I'm a big fan of Spain, as we've talked offline, and the reason is is that the you guys are are really nice people.

03:18

Thank you.

03:19

Yeah, I'm not I'm not trying to blow smoke up your skirt, but you guys are, and the food's always good, and the people are always nice. We're going to be in Barcelona November.

03:31

It's a good place because it's the second city there that has the second football team in Spain. You know?

03:38

Yeah, the

03:39

first one in Real Madrid. Yeah, I was going to say, yeah, there's some

03:42

trash talking happening right now, because I, I truly, we normally as a family we we we decide that okay we're here doing work. Where do we go after the fact? And I haven't made it to Madrid.

03:59

No. No.

03:59

Do I need to make

04:01

it? You should be there. Are

04:02

you going to be there?

04:03

Yeah.

04:05

Are you in? And then

04:06

visit our factory in the north of Spain.

04:08

Shut up! Shut up! I'm all

04:12

in. Nurbin in the in the country bus. It's amazing. It's amazing place. Very nice coast, north coast of Spain, amazing food.

04:23

You you want to know the connection? My wife is Basque. Yes. Wow. Our

04:30

our company is Basque.

04:31

Shut up.

04:34

We are a Basque company.

04:35

See, so I was at at an event in Barcelona, and one of my favorite conversations was with a company that is out of the Basque region. You guys are fun.

04:51

Yeah,

04:51

fun. Now see, see how I digress. See, we're not talking about your company. We're just talking about you and why you're so cool.

05:00

Okay, let's let's talk about you a little bit more. Give us a little background on who Lewis is. Well, we are a person that has been working in the energy sector for more than 30 years currently. So this is not a special issue. The only motivation to do that is I'm close to retired in the company, but I've been having fun these 30 years in different positions. You've been with the company for 30 years? No, no, no, no. I have in the company just a little bit more than one year. Arrived very recently in the company. Yeah. CEO.

05:40

Yeah. The

05:40

company was in the last times. The company was Siemens Group.

05:48

Yeah, in the Siemens Group. Yeah, yeah.

05:50

06:30

Because you got to succeed, you have to succeed. It's especially now when when you look at the power market, just just globally, the demand for power, the demand for those solutions, the demand for trusted in you know companies to be able to help you along with that journey, I think it's it's grown exponentially. Yeah, I just do.

06:55

Absolutely, absolutely, and the the man is over there. My perception, as I have 30 years in the company, we are probably in the same situation that we have mid 20s. In the moment, on that moment, I was working in General Electric. I was involved in the gas turbines vendor. On that moment, we didn't have the capability to provide all the gas turbines that the market demands, and I see in the Poorgen last year identify that the moment is quite similar, is close to booming the market, but taking in consideration all the vendors that are in the current in the market, there are not enough capacity to cover the current demand and the demand that they are going to face in the following years. So it's going to be an amazing times.

07:49

Take us through what the company does. What do you guys do?

07:54

We do gas engines and diesel engines.

07:58

When you say gas, natural gas.

07:59

Not well. Different kind of gasses. Okay,

08:02

okay, okay.

08:03

Our our base is natural gas, but we run engines for biogas, synthetic gas. These are low methane number gasses up to natural gas. So we have a full range to run with different type of gasses.

08:20

So multi fuel, of course. You're you're with the propane folks over there. That's and that's that's a big that's a big solution. But but you're you're manufacturing the engines

08:33

in north of Spain in the Basque region. Yeah. So we have three facilities. One is for the engine manufacturing. The other one close to that, five kilometers away from that, is to do assembling the container solution, the black and plate power plants, and the third one is a little bit south in the bit area and in the south of the gas country, which is for R&D center. On that R&D center, we test different kind of gasses coming from a biogas for a wastewater plant, different gasses or blend gasses. We test all of these difficult gasses on that facility, in order to try to use on the engines. Yeah.

09:24

See, long ago in a galaxy far, far away, I was negotiating power purchase agreements for Southern California Edison. One of the biggest challenge was the biogas, and and how it just wreaked havoc on on those assets, those generation assets.

09:44

Yeah,

09:45

are they doing better? Are they scrubbing that that you know biogas better? What what? How are we achieving?

09:51

Well, currently the the key issue is to take advantage of the gas as it is. So we. Advantage is the gas comes from a wastewater plant, or it comes from a biodigester or we can use, we can reproduce the same conditions that we have in the plant in order to adapt our engines to that gas conditions. So it works for the advantages that we can provide to the market. So it doesn't matter if the gas has higher or lower methane number. Yeah. So we can adapt the combustion to the engine in order to take advantage and use that gas. That in other cases is a is a waste to use that waste to produce energy.

10:40

With that that same model, some of the challenges, and I'm sorry, I'm gravitating to this one just because it's interesting. One of the challenges that existed within the the bio or digester gas market was the fact that, especially landfill, is the is the introduction of oxygen in an anaerobic environment, right? And so you're creating a hazardous environment within, and then of course you're creating fire and all that stuff. How does how does your solution address the proper? It's it's inconsistent. It's not it's not like, hey, here's here it is. It's just it's producing. How does how does your how your solution deal with a fluctuating fuel source?

11:30

Well, the key issue is not the mix or the or the how many how much gas or how much oxygen you have on the gas at the end is the methane number and how do you prepare with the control combustion system? How do you prepare this engine to use as much as possible the methane that you have in the in the gas methane ethane etc in the in the in the gas that you're gonna burn in the engine.

12:04

How how do you how do you scrub that fuel source? Because there's you know things that are in it that you know heavies and how do you scrub it

12:14

for not for biogas. That is not the big issue. It is even worse for the syngas. There are a lot of residues in the syngas that currently are. There are a lot of plants that are using as a residue in order to produce this synthetic gas and do that combustion in the engine. Currently, we are the few companies that can use that synthetic gas in the in the biogas there are several different solutions with scrubbers with filters that they can clean that gas in order to avoid all the particles in the gas that can produce some damage in the engine.

13:01

So your your organization allows or works with somebody else that does that scrubbing. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay. That that's that's got to tell you that's pretty fascinating stuff. So how give us a range of what type of generation assets, like size? What do you guys work in? Yeah, X, Y, whatever it is. Yeah,

13:27

our lower pore output engine start in 300 kilowatts. Yeah, up to two megawatts. It's our bigger engine is a two megawatt engine in natural oil gas.

13:42

Now, are we we talking about international? You're here, you're delivering solutions for the North America market, but you're also delivering solutions in the European market as well.

13:52

Yeah, worldwide.

13:53

Yeah, worldwide.

13:54

Yeah.

13:56

How many how many people work for your organization?

14:01

We are a small company, but currently we have 210 people, 220 people. Most of them currently in our different three facilities in in Spain, but we have commercial and technical people in different regions in different countries here in America, North America, Latin America, Middle East, Africa, Asia, but we have almost 80% of the people doing manufacturing after-sales services based in Europe, and the rest in a worldwide basis.

14:43

Are you vertically integrated? Where you're saying, "Hey, I'm not saying that you have to. You're casting, you know, the blocks or anything. I'm just saying you're you're vertically integrated because you're able to say, 'Okay, these are our specs for our for our solution.'" I source it here. I source it here. We put it all together. You're you're obligated to put it all together, right?

15:05

Yeah. Well, we we don't for sure we are not doing the the casting. We have done that kind of providing and and all the casting mechanization we do around Europe, mainly in you know in the north of Spain, there are several vendors to do that. It was the most heavy industry region in in Spain. So for that, we have a very bunch of vendors that can do that in a near of our facilities.

15:37

Yeah,

15:38

but the rest, for sure, we do by ourselves. We do all the engineering. We do all the design, product developers. We do all the integration of the container solution in order to have a black plug and play, two megawatts plug and play, including all the air cooling system, gas inland system, electrical output to do all the integration together. So this is the kind of a vertical integration that we do, and which is most important for us is the in order to provide value to the market is to do the engineering inside at home in order to do all the customization that the market demands in order to provide to have some flexibility to provide a solution to the to the customers.

16:36

Do you perform a third? Well, do you perform maintenance? Do you say, "Hey, you're using our solution. It's out here. We can. We have a team to be able to sort of help that too out. Do you do you provide sort of that ongoing maintenance too?

16:53

Yeah, our core is to manufacturing the engines, manufacturing the containerized solutions, provide. to the market after-sales, which is parts and services. In the level of services, we don't have capability to cover worldwide, but we have capability to supervise. We have another partners, service partners, and distributors that can provide another level of service.

17:26

Yeah,

17:26

we train them. They to be our partner, to be our distributor. Yeah, you have to have the people trying it by

17:34

us. Yeah,

17:35

you have to have the spare parts warehouse in order to cover this quick answer to the engine demands, we train them. We supervise. We can send people in order to supervise the whole operation at a high level, but at the end, the partners, the dealers, do the blue collar and all

17:58

the

17:58

actions, all that they need to do in the field.

18:04

What markets do you find your company focuses on? You know, some some companies have specific niches, and that's all good, right? What what are we talking about for Europe? Our

18:17

main our main market is a poor generation. Our main customer profile is the IPPs companies, some cases EPC companies that they perform and do the erection works for the for the power plant, the utility companies in some cases for power generation. We have another market that are those specific niche for for special gasses like biogas, syngas, etc. But at the end, is poor generation. Within the power generation concept, we have a big portion in the cogeneration or CHP special gasses as well, and we have another 80% of our market is for port generation, and roughly 20% is for marine, for procurement, procurement in marine.

19:14

Yeah, yeah. So that makes sense. I, yeah, there's a demand there.

19:18

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

19:20

Do you do you find that the market itself? It's I think again. I've said it again. Is that I think we're in this renaissance period. I think there is such an increased demand for power, whatever that might be-an expansion, a growth, whatever it might be. Right? Capital is flowing in. in, and it's just-it's an interesting time.

19:46

Yeah.

19:47

Where do you see the majority, or where do you see that energy, that capital flow happening?

19:54

Question. Good. And that shows what is the the moment that we are living. Currently, during the last year, probably last maximum 20 months.

20:06

Yeah, it's not.

20:07

We are seeing how the data centers is taking all the hostages of the room, is doing some game changer.

20:16

Yeah,

20:16

in the in the industry market, in the poor generation market. Yeah, because they have changed the rules, they need a big amount of the of the poor output. They are demanding a big amount. They are setting a huge PPAs contracts, and they are not vendors and supply chain enough enough to cover that demand. So it's having very very interesting, and they are changing the rules. The delivery times are getting close. The amount of the ticket is getting bigger. So it's changing. So currently we are facing that the traditional customer has been the IPP, the utility companies, and is shifting from that to the data center developers. So it's currently is is a game changer that we are living from a

21:10

supply chain perspective. So all of a sudden there's this increased demand for your solution, right? And now you have this lead time that is like I hear you. You want 25, but I, I, I mean, 20 people. Currently,

21:25

currently we are dealing with a different kind of negotiations.

21:29

Yeah. During

21:30

the last year, we've been talking about okay, how many units do you want? How many units you can produce? Currently, we are negotiating for slots.

21:40

Yeah. See. Do

21:40

you want to buy the the next lots for the next couple of years? My whole production capability. So this is the kind of a conversation that

21:50

is. See, and from your perspective, yeah. Because you you you you and your team, the executives. Now you've got to figure out because it it puts a demand on your capital, your demand on your finances. You're saying here's an opportunity, and then it's just it's a it's really an interesting time.

22:07

Yeah, absolutely. And they are requesting ask, okay, can you deliver to me 100 units in the next six months? Wait a moment. Wait a moment. Okay, if you put an order to me for that, okay, I'm gonna do some modifications on my factory in order to increase that capability to serve to you on that delivery time. 400 units in next month, so I need to do some and solve some bottlenecks on my factory. Yes, we are not talking about price, we're not talking about a new model.

22:43

I know. It is very exciting. It is. It's exciting, but it's just really these are challenging, and and because of my utility background, I'm pretty, I'm pretty traditional when it gets to that utility. You got your power generation, you got your transmission, you got. It's linear, right? Then all of a sudden, companies like you and others are plopping, generating. Now it's demand side. Now it's all over the place. And for me, when I think of the system operator, I don't know. I don't. I don't know what you're doing. All I know as a consumer that these lights don't flicker. That my computer works. That data center because it's very temperamental and needs to be not you know good power, right? You don't violate that. And I don't know.

23:34

And that has changed suddenly all the trends in the market because during the last previous year, we've been talking about the green emissions, reduced CO2, this kind of things. But currently, we are talking about delivery times, how much, how many power output you can put on the table. Yeah, it's absolutely different. It's

23:59

the same, same. Hey, how do people get a hold of you? What would be the best way if somebody says I want to talk to Luis? I want to talk to your team. What's the best way? How do how would they get a hold of you? What's your contact information? Well, you can reach us in the in our website. Yeah, it's the best way to contact directly to us is a dash in your URL. Yeah, yeah, I got you. But you can share my contact with your your audience. I like it.

24:31

So are you out on

24:32

LinkedIn?

24:32

Yes, absolutely.

24:34

Okay, that that gives me the ability to be able to grab your LinkedIn statguard and slap it on my website.

24:39

Okay, perfect.

24:41

You're you're fantastic.

24:44

Thank you.

24:45

I like that conversation.

24:46

Yeah, fantastic. I'm

24:47

glad people like you are in that that role of trying to solve this because I I don't. I'm not I'm not capable. I I don't have that. You're you're amazing. Thank you very much for being on the show. All right, we're gonna have all the cons. Information for Luis out on Industrial Talk. We'll have his stat card. That's what I've already said. So reach out to him. It's a must. We're here at Power Gen in San Antonio. You get to greet, meet great people like Luis and others who want to solve your problems and are dealing with really challenging stuff. All right, stay tuned. We will be right back.

25:21

You're listening to the Industrial Talk Podcast Network.

25:32

How about that for a conversation? Solutions, solving problems, making you a success. It is happening now in the power generation market. Luis, right there, right there, CEO. I'm gonna, I'm gonna get this name. I'm gonna get it, Guascor Energy, right there. Statcard, right there, solving problems. It's an amazing time, an amazing market, and it's an opportunity for you to connect with people like Lewis and others within the power generation world. It everybody's having this conversation. You got a yeah, you got a data center. Yeah, you're having this conversation. If you're if you're looking for the ability to be able to deploy generation assets and do it effectively and reliably. Reliably, that was a mouthful. Yeah, people are looking for solutions. It is a great market to get into. You need to connect with Luis. Absolutely connect with him. As you can tell, you wouldn't be disappointed. All right, Industrial Talk is a marketing company. Yes, we are. I bet you didn't know that. We are. We are a media company. Yep, we do that too. We are a PR company. You know why we are? Is because we want you to succeed. We are based in industry. We are passionate about industry, and and quite frankly, we want you to have more eyes on what you do because you need to succeed. You need to you need to talk to me. We take the conversations we have, and then we produce all of the content that reflects your passion and who you are. You need to tell your story. That's where it all starts. If you're not telling your story, people are not listening. People are not seeing. People are not embracing your solutions. I just just tell your story. Go out to Industrial Talk. Click Connect. Talk to me. Let's have a conversation. All right. That was Power Gen. Lewis is the guy, CEO, Guascor Energy. Must connect. All his contact information is out there. PowerGen, make sure that that is on your calendar. All right, be bold, be brave, Derek Greatley. Hang out with Lewis, and you will be changing the world. We're gonna have another great conversation coming to you shortly. So, as always, stay tuned.