The High Horsepower (HHP) Summit 2013 commenced with pre-conference tours on Monday, September 16 at the Caterpillar Lafayette Engine Center in Lafayette, Indiana, and the Electro-Motive Diesel LaGrange Engine Facility in LaGrange, Illinois. As the windy city became the rainy city, the Summit officially opened on September 17 in Chicago’s McCormick Place, Lakeside Center.
HHP Summit Presenting Sponsors were Caterpillar, Encana, and AGL Resources. Principal Sponsors included Chart, GE, Cummins, Shell, and Westport, with companies from other industries also serving as important backers.
CEO Erik Neandross of Gladstein, Neandross & Associates, the conference organizers, opened the meeting by describing this year’s event as “the largest and most impressive gathering of natural gas high horsepower stakeholders that the industry has ever seen” and announced that the second annual event had eclipsed last year’s. (See “High Horsepower Summit 2012,” CryoGas, December 2012, p. 30.) Attendance at the 2013 HHP conference increased from 800 participants to over 1,400 and the number of exhibitors increased from 45 to 77.
In his opening remarks, Neandross compared the conversion from diesel to natural gas in high horsepower industries to the conversion of locomotives from steam to diesel, a real game changer. Interestingly, today locomotives are being converted from diesel to natural gas. Two locomotives in Canada are currently running on natural gas and diesel (dual fuel). In the marine transportation arena, the soon to be commissioned dual fuel Harvey Energy, the first of six Harvey Gulf off-shore supply vessels, is under construction and will be the first US flag vessel ever to operate primarily on LNG.
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