Sparkstone Electrical Group (SEG) helped Peetz Farmers Co-Op modernize its grain operations — with a personal touch and attention to detail.
When you work in agriculture, you don’t always have the luxury of pristine CAD drawings or polished engineering documents. Many grain operations have been running for decades, expanding and adapting as needed — often with control panels built in-house by electricians who know the facility better than anyone. It works … until the day it doesn’t.
That’s where Peetz Farmers Cooperative found itself when it came to SEG for help updating its automation control panels.
A Grain Operation Facing New Requirements — and Old Documentation
Peetz, Colorado, is a small agricultural community surrounded by corn, wheat, and long stretches of open road. The team at Peetz Farmers Co-Op had always built and maintained their own control panels. For years, that was enough. When they needed their panels to be UL-certified, they came to SEG’s UL 508A panel shop to get the job done. What they had for documentation, though, wasn’t a set of schematics but handwritten notes, sketches made in the field, and years of shared knowledge. They needed compliant panels, but they were starting from very little on paper.
From Chicken Scratch to Schematics
SEG brought its consulting engineering partner, HAO Consulting, into the project to help formalize the information the co-op had into proper electrical drawings. But they didn’t stop there. Instead of relying solely on the handwritten notes, SEG and HAO engineers drove nearly three hours to Peetz — a tiny town with more silos than stoplights — to walk the system in person.
For Peetz, that visit changed everything. They weren’t used to vendors showing up on-site, especially not from that far away. SEG’s team inspected every junction, traced every connection, and confirmed every assumption. Only then did they build the UL-certified panels.
Keeping Grain Flow Safe and Reliable
The panels support the automation of Peetz’s grain-handling system: controlling augers that fill trucks, offload grain from the field, and move corn into the silos. This isn’t just on/off control. Timing and sequencing matter. Turning on multiple motors at the wrong moment can overload equipment, damage product, or cause unsafe conditions. The updated control panels ensure motors start in the proper order and the system runs safely and consistently.
When SEG delivered the finished panels, Peetz noticed the difference — clean documentation, proper compliance, and hardware that matched their real-world operation.
A Partnership That Stuck
The experience left a strong impression. After seeing SEG’s approach — the on-site visit, the attention to detail, the willingness to work from sketched drawings — Peetz committed to using SEG for all future UL-certified panels. It wasn’t just about compliance. It was about having a partner willing to meet them where they were at, literally and figuratively.
Bringing Order to Imperfect Information
Most agricultural operations don’t have perfect documentation, and SEG understands that. Whether the starting point is a complete CAD package, a PDF markup, or a drawing on the back of a notepad, SEG can build a finished UL-certified solution that works the way it should.
SEG delivers:
- UL 508A and UL 698 industrial control panels
- Turnkey industrial automation systems
- Site verification and field-driven engineering
- Solutions for agriculture, OEMs, utilities, manufacturing, and a wide range of other industries
If you have a panel that needs modernization — or a system that needs to be brought up to code — SEG can take whatever documentation you have and turn it into a reliable, compliant control solution.
Contact our team to discuss your requirements and get started.
