PacB Group // Diesel Generators Aid Industry and Homeowners Alike

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Diesel Generators Aid Industry and Homeowners Alike

Over the last 20 years, diesel generators have become ubiquitous across South Africa. Diesel generators’ popularity was given a massive boost by the parastatal power supplier (which incredulously to this day remains the only legal supplier of bulk electricity in this country), as it became the albatross around all our necks. With a lot of industry running on diesel – a fact often missed by consumers – diesel generators found many willing users, familiar as the fuel and its production value already was to many in the fraternity.

Not only farmers on their tractors were historically tied into diesel in this country. Diesel fuel is the unseen power source for thousands of companies and thousands of processes on a daily basis, no matter that most people remain unaware of how extensively diesel powers industrial productivity both here and abroad. Diesel is arguably the dominant fuel of global industry, based on how much is used and the processes it can drive, alongside petrol, coal, and gas.

While the notion of generating electricity from diesel fuel might have been novel for some when the curtain fell, the concept of diesel energy was not. Ergo the rapid rise of diesel generators as a mainstream component of business at large. Notwithstanding the concurrent rise of alternative energy solutions, for most going concerns, diesel generators presented as the most cost-effective and efficient solution to keeping the lights on. Again, without disparaging green energy solutions that are nowadays more and more frequently incorporated into new developments’ architecture, diesel generators have become highly efficient and refined because they still do, today, so often tick so many more boxes than alternative solutions.

For homeowners, the novelty value might have been higher, but they too took to diesel generators to keep their households running smoothly. There was an initial year or two of ugly learning curves at the retail end, that is true, plagued also by a rash of foreign suppliers offloading their just-adequate generators on our shores. Standby generators were sold as faithful daily runners (they are not), and much over- and under-specification confused the retail generator market for a moment. That said, and with the possible exception of the smartphone, few other technical inputs have ever been assimilated so rapidly by South African society as diesel generators have been.

Demystifying the Diesel Generator

It might come as a surprise to many to learn that diesel generators have a fairly elementary architecture. There is a diesel engine and an electrical generator inside every diesel generator, but that is where the simplicity ends. If you have ever lifted the hood of a modern luxury sedan, the core mechanics you will find there are the same as those of any industrial diesel generator. The uses for the power generated by a car engine are obviously different and more diverse than those of diesel generators, but on that point, the electrical demands of a diesel generator are more direct and intense. Put differently, a car will generate electricity to power a host of displays, electrical components of the vehicle, and overall driving functionality. A diesel generator’s role, however, is solely to generate electricity, with the least loss of energy efficiency between the fuel and the electrical output.

That might seem to imply that cars are more complex machines than the average industrial generator, but if cars generate electricity almost incidentally, diesel generators have a wholesale dedication (and architecture) towards producing only electricity as an end product. In that seemingly slight difference lies a host of electrical engineering that makes diesel generators a different kind of complex tech. Today found on standby or running daily affairs in homes, offices, factories, and large industrial premises, it is fair to say that diesel generators are now extremely common.

The Obvious Benefits of Diesel Generators

While most people imagine a generator in shopping trolley-sized proportions, the fact is that generators can be as small as a shoe box and as large as your lounge. A mine, for example, not only has to power operations, but it has to power heavy duty operations that are incredibly energy-heavy, while also often having to distribute the generated electricity over several kilometres up, down, left, and right. Diesel generators come in many sizes, and no matter that the average consumer perception imagines them to be small and easy to handle, giant banks of large generators now power industrial endeavours all over South Africa.

There are several obvious benefits to making diesel generators your power source, such as:

• The price of fuel extrapolates very directly into costs when running a diesel generator. In other words, diesel generators are popular because they do not cost much to run, at least in comparison to alternative power supply options. The price of diesel in South Africa makes it so, and although it still hurts, diesel fuel’s price has been a big driver of diesel generators’ popularity here.
• After a sufficiently large critical mass of buyers had begun to utilise diesel generators, confidence in the solution grew to a point where today, it seems silly to mention that of course the principal benefit of a diesel generator is the consistency of power supply. The best generators perform as asked, and that performance level has reassured potential buyers that the technology can be trusted. Think of school boarding houses, and think of a hospital environment. If the power goes off in those scenarios, children go to bed hungry, and people can even die. It is fair to say that in spite of their lack of intimacy with the equipment, both industry players and consumers alike now have a stable history of diesel generators actively being installed in this country, and that goes a long way towards reassurance too.
• Diesel generators’ engines are more reliable and long-lived than their petrol alternatives. The engines in diesel generators run at a lower cost than petrol ones, and the potential for bad accidents is almost eliminated, due to diesel’s inability to simply catch fire without an open flame lighting the fuel. Without spark plugs, diesel engines are already safer than petrol ones, and a diesel generator is unlikely to raise your hazard profile at all, and may even drop it. 

The Home of SA’s Best Diesel Generators

PacB is a company fully immersed in diesel generator technology. We do not just supply generators, we build them, after designing them to spec. We build the operational control tools too, and we will also install on site. We are also growing our expertise with green energy research and application, so when we give our clients the best power solution, it is a holistic solution held up against all existing technologies for comparison.

We offer an affordable maintenance programme for the exemplary servicing of your diesel generators. Smart businesses understand that small maintenance bills stretch the value from the purchase price into exponentially greater savings over the longer term. Diesel generators are durable, and they really are an investment and should be maintained like one.

Our clients rate us for our smart generator technology, professional service, and operational scale. You can call on us for the best diesel generator solution – one that very effectively meets your needs.