On May 19, 2011, the California Office of Administrative Law approved the more stringent emissions standards proposed by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) in amendments to the Airborne Toxic Control Measure. As a result, operating a power generation unit in California will be a challenge. While proposals to regulate emissions for emergency standby generators were ultimately voted down by the state late last year, new diesel generators intended for prime or continuous applications are required to have EPA Tier 4 certifications.

Operations with remote power requirements—such as rock quarries, asphalt plants, or companies utilizing large, stationary electric cranes—now require this new emissions standard. Tier 4 certification by the EPA is a long process, and it carries many requirements, such as mandatory extended warrantees on emission related components. Products offered as "compliant" to Tier 4 emissions have not met these stringent requirements.

In anticipation of new emission standards (which were first proposed by CARB in 2004) Caterpillar has been developing packaged gensets with Tier 4 technology for some time. With this month’s release of two new Tier 4 prime rated diesel generator sets, Caterpillar is now the first company to offer packaged diesel units that are certified to meet National EPA emissions standards for prime applications—the Caterpillar C15 Tier 4 certified 500 ekW standby/455 ekW prime and the Caterpillar C27 Tier 4 certified 800 ekW standby/725 ekW prime rated generator sets are currently available from Peterson.

These generators are on order and will soon be utilized by California business owners; Russ Ricks, owner of West Valley Sand and Gravel in Redding will take delivery of his new C15 Tier 4 generator to power a rock crusher later this year. As businesses like Ricks’s need convenient solutions for meeting new emissions requirements for power generation units, Peterson Cat is ready to provide.

Click here to learn more about Caterpillar’s development of Tier 4 packaged gensets.