PacB Group // Diesel Generators – Keeping the Wheels of Commerce and Industry Turning

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Diesel Generators – Keeping the Wheels of Commerce and Industry Turning

It was a long and hard journey from the years when companies and utilities first built their own small-scale power plants to meet the individual needs of their businesses, to the vast power generation and distribution network that commenced its development in 1923 under the command of Eskom – the new state-owned electricity provider. This important transition would, in time, mark the birth of a golden age for industry and commerce in South Africa. However, nobody could have foreseen the eventual failure of the parastatal that would see consumers once again relying on diesel generators to produce their own power.

While coal-fired plants remain the predominant source of electrical power in South Africa, oil and gas-fired plants, hydroelectric schemes, nuclear fission, wind farms, and solar arrays all now play a part in a losing battle to keep pace with the continuously growing demand by the nation’s consumers for mains electricity. Consequently, many have reason to be grateful to the English scientist Michael Faraday who discovered electromagnetic induction and the German inventor Rudolf Diesel who harnessed that phenomenon by creating the first diesel generator.

His engine relied not on a spark plug to ignite the fuel as in a petrol-fired model but on the heat produced by mechanical compression of the air and diesel fuel drawn into the machine’s cylinders. The result was an engine with far higher thermal efficiency than any competing device and the perfect option to drive the machines that were soon to become known as diesel generators.

Even before the difficulties faced by Eskom had escalated to the point where it became necessary for the national service provider to introduce its programme of power-saving measures, many companies were already finding it necessary to generate at least a portion of their electricity on-site. In the case of mines, farms, construction companies, and others required to operate in areas remote from the national grid, the sole means to provide the electrical power they depended upon was to install diesel generators and produce it themselves.

In addition to their use in those locations where businesses have no access to Eskom electricity, there are also many instances in which the mains supply alone is unable to provide all of the power that may be required during periods of peak loading. On these occasions, it would not be feasible to reduce the demand and risk failing to meet production targets. Instead, factories choose to augment the power of the mains supply with additional wattage produced by one or more gensets located on site. While there are other options, the most frequently used means to generate that additional wattage has continued to be a diesel generator.

Sadly, despite numerous reassurances to the contrary, the national grid remains overburdened and Eskom’s programme of planned load shedding continues. While long overdue investment in the parastatal’s ailing infrastructure now looks like it could finally happen, there could still be years of playing catchup before something resembling a normal service can finally be resumed and maintained. In the meantime, it is not just factories that are being forced to generate emergency power when rolling blackouts strike but many of the nation’s small businesses, private households and commercial enterprises as well. Imagine the possible consequences to a hotel or, even worse, to a hospital, if left with no mains power and lacking access to the vital emergency power source made possible by diesel generators.

Where these devices were once quite noisy, their design has improved over the years, and in addition to being the tough workhorses upon which so many South African’s must now depend, many of the newer models are also surprisingly silent. When housed in a weatherproof canopy, this both reduces noise and allows them to be installed outdoors, while some diesel generators are supplied mounted on trailers for ease of transportation.