Kelly Soares is the voice many in the Caribbean Northern Light family are familiar with.  She has been Service Administrator for Parts & Power for over 4 years.  She has shepherded a line of Service Managers at Parts & Power including Dan Durbin, David Romasco and recently Stewart Dovey.  She also manages to keep order among the Service Staff at Parts & Power.  She has, for many years now, trained dealers on the process of how to submit Northern Lights warranty claims, issued warranty authorizations and liaised with the factory on the status of warranty claims for dealers and customers.

On 1 July she left for maternity leave to prepare for the arrival of her third child.  Kelly is of fairly small stature.  She struggles to achieve 5 feet in height.  Normally of very slim build, her recent pregnancy seemed to have made her as wide as she was tall.   It is hard to look and be tough with Service Engineers when your belly is so large that it would seem to only take a pin prick to pop.  But she managed to do it over the last 3 or 4 months.
On 13 July, she gave birth to her third boy, who was 7 lbs, 8 oz.  His name is Kehzai Elijah.

The entire Parts & Power family welcomes Kehzai.  We expect him to be typically healthy, happy and good looking.  And we look forward to Kelly’s return in October!

On Tuesday and Wednesday 20 & 21 August, Dealer Principles and Representatives met in Deerfield Beach, FL for their semi-annual Caribbean Dealer Conference.  Dealerships from the USVI to Trinidad were in attendance.  A wide range of issues were discussed, and factory representatives were updated on issues arising from Dealers’ Territories.  The Caribbean is a prime cruising area for owners’ of Northern Lights Products and the factory encourages these meetings to get feedback from their customers and monitor the level of service their Caribbean Dealership is able to provide.
New products were discussed, including the new generator pan and sound enclosure designs.  The combination has resulted in reductions of overall package designs by nearly 30%.  Product changes initiated by suggestions from previous meetings, such as cast stainless steel exhaust elbows and attachment bolts, were shown. New generator models up to 500 kw, currently under development were unveiled.
A general discussion on what freight methods from the US to the Caribbean were discussed, with particular emphasis on the fastest method of shipping to each country.  Ideas were also generated on how they could reduce the cost of shipping, to improve customer satisfaction.  Although some countries are able to import items on a duty free basis for Yachts in Transit, all countries impose some costs, such as Brokerage Fees and Government surcharges.  There is no solution for these charges and so parts prices suffer the unavoidable additional costs.
Comparison of the Northern Lights products vs other Marine Generators was discussed.  It was generally felt that the NL product required less maintenance, used far fewer parts, was easier to repair, had far more parts redundancy, and ran longer than anything else on the Market today.  The competition, with more than 30 ways to shut down, was generally felt to be less reliable.  A major differentiator was the factory support that is offered by Northern Lights.  Although most of the dealers attending are dealers for at least one other Marine Generator manufacturer, none had the level of support they experience with NL with any other manufacturer.  The 3 levels of service and parts support they got from Parts & Power, the factory branch in Deerfield Beach, and the factory in Seattle allowed them to get assistance as late as 2100 local time for both technical and parts assistance.  No other manufacturer even comes close to this support.  The overall cost of ownership with Northern Lights was felt to be significantly less than any competitor, despite the fact that the NL product was slightly more expensive up front. All of these factors make the NL product uniquely qualified for customers in the Caribbean, as they put far more hours on their generators than most pleasure craft owners.  Dealers reported that their customers routinely put between 1,000 and 4,000 hours per year, as opposed to less than 500 for the average pleasure craft owner.
The CaribbeanNorthernLights.com website was discussed and ways to make it more attractive and user friendly were suggested.  Parts Specials are being advertised on the website currently.
Warranty policy and claim procedures were discussed. With a 1 year parts and labor, second year parts and limited 5 year policy, the NL warranty is the best in the Industry. Means of submitting warranty claims on line was demonstrated.  It was revealed that warranty on the NL product was less than 1%, which is the lowest in the Industry.
The Technicold brand of Air Conditioning, Refrigeration and Load Banks was discussed.  Northern Lights design criteria were used in designing the products.  Robust 316 s/s is used throughout the constructions.  Off the shelf, non-proprietary, controls assure that the products can be repaired anywhere in the world.  Automatic load banks are freshwater cooled and far outlive the competition.  In fact, NL has never sold a heating element replacement part in their long history of providing the load banks. Several Dealers expressed interest in becoming Technicold dealers after seeing the features and benefits of the product line. The robust construction and reliability are important to their customers.
The subject matter was interesting enough that all the participants remained on at the Conference well after the planned ending time of noon on Wed.

Northern Lights and Caribbean Distributor, Parts & Power, are holding a Caribbean Dealer Conference on 20 & 21 August. Representatives from Dockyard Electric in Trinidad, Grenada Marine and Palm Tree Marine in Grenada, Marintek in St. Lucia, Dominica Marine Center in Dominica, Seagull Services and Marine Power Service in Antigua, Electec in St. Maarten, All Points Marine and Plan B in St. Thomas, and Parts & Power in Tortola will be in attendance.
The two day Conference is an opportunity for the Caribbean Northern Lights dealers to get together and discuss how they can improve customer satisfaction with Northern Lights generators, Lugger propulsion engines and Technicold Air Conditioning, Refrigeration and Load Bank products.  New products that are being launched currently, and in the near future, will be unveiled.  Feedback from customers’ experience in the field will be discussed, and conveyed to Design and Engineering Teams.  It will be a unique opportunity to translate information on customers’ comments and suggestions into modifications and changes in the Product lines.  EPA and European emissions law changes, future regulations, and how those will force changes to the products in next few years, will be discussed.  Service topics will be shared from the Factory to Dealers and Dealers back to the Factory.
The constantly evolving Technicold Product Line will be introduced to many of the Caribbean dealers in attendance.  Technicold’s high quality stainless steel Air Conditioning products will be displayed and demonstrated with particular attention paid to the features and benefits of the product.  Dealers will also be introduced to Technicold s/s Refrigeration products and the Automatic Load Banks.  Technicold Load Banks are fresh water cooled, designed to utilize a small footprint for installations, are standard with Digital controllers, and are offered with PLC full color LCD screen as an option. These systems allow the vessel to manage loading of generators to ensure better engine performance.
We will be introducing the new Northern Lights HybriGen system. HybriGen is the result of the collaboration between Northern Lights and BAE systems, a worldwide leader defence technologies, electronics and military equipment. HybriGen is the first truly variable speed power generation system which can be used for ships service AC power, and as an AC propulsion system simultaneously. HybriGen  is a completely load dependent system so the engine only runs at the speed required to make the power that the vessel needs and, when used in conjunction with a battery storage system the engine will shut down once the batteries are charged allowing the vessel to run quietly and cleanly on batteries only. 
Unlike others in the market, the HybriGen system is the only one on the market which is a completely engineered, tested and commercially fielded system in the world with over 4000 operating in major city busses worldwide every day.
Previous Caribbean Dealer Meetings have produced changes such as changes to s/w pumps from lip to mechanical ceramic seals and hex head as well as slotted screws on cover plates; introduction of stainless steel exhaust elbows to replace cast iron ones; addition of coolant recovery bottles, reduction in overall package size, the change to all s/s bolts and screws on the generator set and many others.  Customer feedback and dealer ideas on how to make the Products more customer-friendly, more reliable, and longer lived will, once again, be translated into product improvements and changes.
Stay tuned for updates on the ideas and developments coming from the Conference.