Montana propane retailer adds efficiencies with sonar-based sensors at Growth Summit

July 1, 2025 By Bob Sandrick 0 Comments

Moving propane to and through western Montana presents challenges. Snow can fall in any month of the year in this mountainous region. Railroad terminals are relatively scarce.

That’s why Energy Partners LLC, a propane retailer with headquarters in Missoula and offices in six other western Montana towns, relies on storing propane at its 27 bulk plants. Storage is especially important during winter when heavy snow can cause delays in truck and train deliveries.

However, until recently, tracking inventory at so many bulk plants was arduous. Energy Partners sent workers monthly to record accurate readings of the propane remaining in each tank.

Then, last year, Energy Partners joined forces with Mopeka, a global firm based in New Braunfels, Texas. In 2016, Mopeka introduced new sonar-based tank sensors that use sound waves to measure the volumes of liquids in tanks.

DeWayne O’Brien, general manager at Energy Partners, says Mopeka’s tank monitors are more than 99 percent accurate. O’Brien, who’s been in the propane business for 25 years, had never seen a monitor that precise.

“We no longer have to send people out to the tanks, and our inventory has never been so accurate,” O’Brien says. “We’re able to see fuel going in and leaving the tanks in real time every day.”

The Energy Partners-Mopeka collaboration might never have happened if not for the annual LP Gas Growth Summit, which brings propane retailers and businesses that can support them together for potential partnerships.

O’Brien attended his first Growth Summit in September 2023 in Orlando, Florida. It was there that he met Kevin Jaffe and Pat Halpin – COO and global director of sales, respectively – of Mopeka.

Going into the summit, O’Brien knew of Mopeka but never dealt with the company directly. He had even sold Mopeka’s sonar-based sensors for smaller tanks after buying them from wholesalers.

But O’Brien wasn’t interested in any new monitors, at least not for residential tanks. He already had 9,200 residential tank monitors from another company and was quite satisfied with them.

O’Brien asked Jaffe and Halpin about their other products. They showed him their solution for his bulk tank monitor problem.

“I went to the summit with a preconceived idea that these guys are trying to sell me products we already had,” O’Brien says. “But when they started talking about new technology and how much they cared about my business, it was definitely worth listening to.”

After field-testing the sonar sensors for a few months, Energy Partners decided to use Mopeka’s tank monitors on all of its bulk tanks. The devices were easy to install. Tank volume data is stored in the cloud and accessible on desktop computers, laptops and even smartphones.

The partnership with Mopeka was more than O’Brien expected at his first Growth Summit, which for him was also a rare opportunity to talk to manufacturers, instead of just wholesalers, of various new products.

“I’m always looking for ways to make us better and enhance our business, and any product that can enhance our customer experience is extremely important,” O’Brien says. “We have seven competitors in our region, which I love because it pushes us to be innovative and bring in new technology.”

Matt Tredinnick, Mopeka’s chief marketing officer, says the 2023 Growth Summit was also his company’s first. He said the summit was well organized, and Jaffe and Halpin met several prospective clients there.

“I liked the style of the event, the ability to engage one to one with key customers that we have wanted to get into a conversation with in a more business-like, friendly and engaging environment,” Tredinnick says.

“And that is what the Growth Summit offers,” Tredinnick says. “It has both social and business meetings and opportunities to show what our capabilities are and differentiate ourselves from the competition.”

Mopeka and Tredinnick were so impressed by the summit that he wrote a case study about the new Energy Partners-Mopeka partnership and the summit’s role in bringing them together. The case study is available here.