The TAS Energy Story, a Timeline

1980s-2002

TAS Energy had its beginnings in the early 1980s. The future founder of TAS, Tom Pierson, managed the Industrial Division for Trane in Houston. During that time, Tom specialized in providing industrial chillers and controls for process and petrochemical applications. It was Pierson who lead the team that developed the first gas turbine inlet air-cooling systems in the mid to late 1980s. These early systems were composed of modified chillers for use in outdoor power plant environments - but the power plant contractors were still constructing the entire system in the field in a traditional HVAC configuration.

By combining his experience in the industrial HVAC industry with that of the power generation industry, Tom realized there was a better way to deliver these systems than the traditional “stick-built” field erected method. That way was to provide and ship the entire plant as a “plug & play” modular plant so that field engineering, construction and risk were minimized. This construct allowed for repeatable, high-quality installations that guaranteed performance, price and scheduling to plant operators around the world. This new “packaging” concept caught on rapidly in the power industry due to its inherently better financial performance - particularly with deregulated Independent Power Producers (IPPs) who had to be innovative and highly efficient to thrive in the competitive merchant power market. Within two years, this new modular approach for accomplishing Turbine Inlet Cooling (TIC) completely dominated the world market. Field erected TIC systems rarely occurred after that time.

In late 2001 a new President, Craig Hurlbert, was brought in from the power industry to help the company handle the explosive growth. Craig’s arrival, and continued growth initiated a further hiring of experienced power & packaging professionals including TAS’ current President, Mike Brady, its VP of Sales, Gary Hilberg, and many others.

In 2002, the Independent Power Producers (IPPs) went through a dramatic cutback with the fall of Enron and the post-911 economic slowdown. With many fewer power plants being built, TAS began looking for new markets which could utilize its high-efficiency, low cost methods for undertaking large scale cooling projects. This led to focusing on large-scale chilling plants for commercial buildings - specifically with respect to District Cooling where owners were more open to innovation, striving to find the lowest cost to produce the chilled water they provided to a number of buildings.

2003-2005

In 2003, TAS Energy landed its first District Cooling project in Dubai. The project, Jameriah Beach Residences (JBR), called for the installation of a 60,000 ton chilled water plant to air-condition a new 22 million square-foot multipurpose residential & shopping development. Also in 2003, TAS Energy moved into the Mission Critical market by providing chilled water to its first casino for a Harrah’s project in the US.

In 2005, TAS was chosen to build the world’s largest District Cooling plant at Crescent of Palm Island – again in Dubai. This 120,000-ton plant was double the size of the JBR project, and serves as the only source of air conditioning for all of the buildings on the Palm Island Crescent including the new Atlantis Resort and many other famous hotels. At 120,000 tons it was the world’s largest District Cooling plant at the time.

Prior to this time, modular plants had been looked at as a solution for smaller to midsized projects but these mega Middle East projects proved it could win at the very largest projects as well. TAS established an overseas office in Dubai to handle all its Middle East business.

TAS Energy remained busy with both Turbine Inlet Chilling and District Cooling projects. In 2005, TAS provided the Turbine Inlet Cooling system for the world’s most efficient and advanced plant – General Electric’s new 7H combined cycle gas turbine plant in California. In addition TAS installed its first turnkey Turbine Inlet Chilling retrofit in Asia.

TAS continued to expand its commercial cooling business in 2005 by installing its first chilled water plant for the U.S. Government to serve a classified command center; it installed its first ESCO (Energy Service Company) project for PEPCO for district cooling of a campus of State of North Carolina government buildings, and provided chilled water plants for three more casinos.

In addition, TAS Energy moved into a new market for heavy process refrigeration doing a very large project at minus – 40F, freezing a portion of a large acreage of land for a new shale oil recovery process for a major oil company. This project was unique not only due to its large-scale and low temperatures, but also for its air-cooled heat rejection technology which allowed for no water to be needed.

TAS also began developing IP and specialty skill sets needed to go after a future market for turning heat into electricity, ultimately representing a spinoff from its industrial refrigeration business. This new technology would develop a cycle that was the inverse of the refrigeration cycle. This new cycle was called the Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC). While the ORC cycle already existed, TAS worked to optimize it further with some unique thermodynamic modeling and processes, and succeeded in getting three patents around this intellectual property. In addition, the entire plant was designed and built according to the pre-engineered and factory built modular plant philosophy that had been so successful in its other markets (TIC and District/Commercial Cooling).

2005 to Present

Originally this ORC technology was envisioned to be applied primarily to waste heat applications. However, since waste heat was not recognized as a resource for emission free power generation and did not enjoy any of the same benefits of its market competition—traditional renewables—the first commercial opportunities for ORC developed in the geothermal market. Geothermal was first because it was considered a renewable which allowed developers to be able to get the long-term PPAs (power purchase agreements) from the utilities necessary to finance projects. The waste heat market remains in its infancy in the U.S., but an important milestone in that process occurred in 2010 with the hiring of TAS’ first government relations director, Kelsey Walker, who founded the waste heat trade association called Heat is Power (www.heatispower.org) to educate policy makers on the many benefits of this market & technology with the intent of waste heat being legally recognized alongside its market competition, a necessary change to ensure market development.

In 2008, TAS Energy started to expand its offerings in the Mission Critical markets. After installing a host of casinos, TAS began installing chilled water plants for several large data centers. This led to some owners and development partners asking about how to expand this modular scope to include entire data centers. Again responding to market needs, TAS began to design and construct modular data centers that included all of the computer server racks, server cooling systems, lights, controls, power distribution, UPS and fire safety features. TAS has also worked with several major data centers to develop their own proprietary systems.

The modular utilities concept proved to be a boom for US job creation…not only at TAS but more importantly for the many US suppliers that provided the bulk of the components and equipment used in these modular plants. This allowed many smaller and medium sized manufacturers to participate in a global market that would otherwise have gone to foreign manufacturers had those overseas projects been done in a traditional field erected manner. This job creation resulted in TAS being awarded the Presidents Export “E” Award in Washington, D.C. in 2009.

To finance the explosive growth of TAS, some private equity funding was brought in 2009 from a consortium of private equity firms which were led by Element Partners, and also included NGP Energy Technology Partners, Robeco, Credit Suisse and Potomac Energy Fund.  This was followed by a secondary round of funding in 2011 from Kleiner Perkins’ Greentech investment fund which has given TAS the continued ability to grow at a rate sufficient to meet the market needs.

Today, TAS Energy remains committed to becoming the world’s leading provider of modular, economic, clean energy solutions. The company continues to focus on combining skills from different industries to develop innovative systems that dramatically change the owner’s value proposition for renewable power generation, data, and heating & cooling utilities. TAS Energy continues to do this by focusing on industries that have traditionally relied on bid & spec, field-erected processes. TAS changes the paradigm toward a new factory design/build modular approach with guaranteed cost, efficiency, performance & schedule that allows owners to accurately measure the enhanced value of this new delivery process. Our objective is to partner with both our customers and our suppliers to provide an integrated value chain with reduced cost and risk to all participants that result in repeatable business based on measured performance.