Have you ever seen or read one of the many takes on Frankenstein? You know the classic tale of Dr. Frankenstein, creating the monster as a way to defy the natural order of the universe from an assortment of cobbled together body parts? Mesa’s original engine is much like that, but instead of grave digging, our original engineers were out there hunting for mechanical parts that would come to make up the original proprietary 22L generators that Mesa became known for in the oil fields of Texas, Wyoming, and Colorado. Instead of defying the natural order of the universe, Mesa was simply defying loss of power and instead of a monster, it was a beast of an engine that could be the backbone of every generator out in the field.
It’s Alive!
Our original engineers, Chris Piasecki and Rich King, started out of a fabrication shop in Casper, Wyoming. The shop was non-insulated (which if you know anything about Casper in the winter, it was probably closer to an ice box than a shop) and only held room for a few generators at a time. It’s a tough job to take an already existing engine and have run it on natural gas while also providing enough power to keep big equipment running in less than a minute.
It takes a lot of different mechanical parts to make an engine run, let alone one that can work as a generator in environments that are incredibly harsh for electronics, engines, and generally anything handmade. Much like Frankenstein’s monster, our team had to find and supply different parts and retrofit them to work inside of a generator housing (we even needed quite a bit of electric wiring if you want another addition to the Frankenstein metaphor). It was quite the process to find all the parts, but our original engineers finally did it in 2016 which helped pave the way to where we are now.
Get Your Torches!
Some of the most iconic set pieces from every adaption of Frankenstein is the scene where townspeople are carrying torches up to Dr. Frankenstein’s castle so they can cast the monster away. Here at Mesa, we never had such a scene, but what we did have is loads of engineers knocking on our door with wrenches instead of torches in hand to start working on the natural gas engines we use in our generators. Back in 2016, we would have to buy the engines that went into our generators but in 2023, that all changed thanks this new team of wrench-wielding engineers.
The brainchild our team came up with was the GV22PU natural gas engine. This engine was built from the ground-up with our generators in mind. Able to handle power fluctuations for both large- and small-scale buildings, these engines came to be one of the proudest things our humble little business ever produced. Not only are they EPA-certified, but they are also turbo-charged to ensure that as soon as you start to experience a power-fluctuation that it will keep the lights on ASAP.
Beauty in Creation
Like any good Frankenstein story, this one started with a handful of parts, a bold idea, and a workshop where the impossible somehow became possible. But that’s where the similarities between Mesa and Frankenstein ends. Instead of creating a monster, Mesa’s engineers created dependable power. What started out as a handful of equipment mixed together quickly became a place where purpose-built engines sit at the core of what we do and much like every iteration of Frankenstein, we always have more to come. Afterall, when your creation is responsible for keeping the lights on, “It’s alive!” is exactly what you want to hear.
