Prime Power Generator Retrofit Saves $60K in Fuel per Year
Leman Engineering's intelligent electric drive radiator fan controls can save $60,000 in fuel costs per year. The cooling systems on modern, emissions friendly diesel generator sets have changed a lot in the last 20 years. They now have 2 cooling circuits: one for jacket water and one for aftercooler. Each circuit has its own thermal demand needs and should be controlled independently.
Running all the fans all the time as usual is inefficient. We know that the cooling demand during the winter for example must be significantly less than in the middle of summer. So running the fans for the worst case scenario wastes energy. By running fans only as much as needed, we are able to eek out some extra efficiency percentage points.
Leman Engineering offers smart radiator fan controls that can vary fan speed, or stage fan motors on and off, to optimize overall generator set efficiency. The controls are smart enough to monitor and control the two circuits individually.
How much diesel can we save? If we assume 7 gallons of fuel per 100kW-hr, the cost of fuel = 7 gallons x $4 = $28 per 100kW-hrs. A larger machine (1-2MW) may use 50kW of radiator power. We estimate that our intelligent radiator controls can cut this in half, thus producing 25kW of savings. On a continuous basis, that may be $7 per hour or about $5,000 per month.
Intelligent radiator controls cost roughly $5,000 to $10,000. Variable speed controls cost more than individually staged fan motors. Either way, the payback and ROI of this proposal should be interesting to many customers.
For more information or a quote for a specific application, please call Randy @ 765-807-5377.
