For more than 75 years Gecolsa (previously General Electric of Colombia) a sister company to Energy International, has been the Caterpillar® dealer for Colombia. In the early 1990s Caterpillar predicted the increased importance of engines and generator sets to the future of the business. In response, Gecolsa initiated their Energy and Industry Division.

In 1995 Caterpillar acquired MaK Motoren and began to market the large medium speed engine (MSE) product. The operating divisions of Caterpillar utilized various marketing strategies to penetrate the “large power plant” market. As a result, Gecolsa was chosen as one of the few dealers with the interest, experience and know-how capable of further developing this effort and was awarded the status of Project Lead Dealer for MSE projects.

As a consequence of this initiative, in early 1998, Gecolsa elected to establish a new, independent, special purpose company, Energy International, Inc. (EI) with the sole objective of pursuing the large energy business in the territory. The new company was founded in Miami as a U.S. Corporation. The initial organization was divided into a Rental Division to offer temporary power, an MSE Sales Division to sell equipment into diesel or gas fired power plant projects and the general administrative and financial management group.

EI, in order to be in a position to offer customers a “complete solution”, later elected to acquire the ability to offer projects, including the Engineering, Procurement and Construction phases (EPC) of a project. The world was moving away from traditional multi-supplier contracts to the one-supplier/one responsibility type EPC contract.

Thus in 2000, after considering several alternatives, Energy International purchased two prestigious Colombian engineering companies (Hidroestudios and Mejia Villegas) renowned in the region for public works and electrical projects respectively. Today this new group supports EI in Project Management, and all engineering requirements (Civil, Mechanical and Electrical). This includes the ability to offer expanded contracts to include sub-stations and transmission & distribution work.

Also in the year 2000 EI entered into a Joint Venture with the local Caterpillar dealer in Brazil. This company was named Soenergy and was chartered to offer the same products and services to the Brazilian market that EI offers in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Product support was initially supplied by a group of technicians and engineers who were recruited from Gecolsa. After a few years, EI organized this group into the Operations & Maintenance Division of the company. This further enhanced EI’s ability to expand the “complete solution concept” to our customers, now permitting the company to offer O&M agreements for 5, 10 or more years and tailored to each customer’s needs.

A long term commercial relationship with Solar® Turbines has enhanced the scope of products which EI can provide. With the addition of gas turbines, EI can truly offer the most economic solution to our customers according to the available fuels and site conditions of each project.

EI’s Sales Division has successfully completed several MSE or turbine power plants ranging from small (5 MW) to large (101 MW) projects, under full EPC contracts. The Rental Division has supplied temporary power in over fourteen countries under both long and short term agreements, from 1.4 up to 180 MW utilizing both diesel and gas turbine products. It is worthy of note that this division has rented a total of 844 GW over 437 months of rental contracts. The O&M Division is managing several full O&M contracts and is looking to win new agreements with every power plant or rental contract that we win.

Our people are highly trained professionals, with offices in Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic and with headquarters in Miami, Florida. Our staff is fully bi-lingual and multi-cultural with employees of more than ten different nationalities. Our management team and engineers have, on average, more than 20 years experience in their respective fields.

At this time we are executing four different EPC power plant projects and are operating nine separate rental agreements including five in Brazil through our joint venture company.

Our vision is to provide a “complete solution” to our customers covering all aspects of the distributed electrical energy business. The company’s objective is to become the number one provider of these products and services in our assigned territory.

To meet customer objectives, Energy International utilizes Solar® Industrial Gas Turbines for gas turbine-powered plant projects. Solar and Taurus are registered trademarks of Solar Turbines Incorporated.