What kind of future awaits diesel gensets

Diesel gensets are currently the most reliable solution for temporary or mobile power due to their versatile, scalable and weather independent operation. Following several years of uncertain and reduced demand driven by falling commodity prices, recently, has seen a return to profitability for the majority of manufactures and rental providers. Despite this strong performance increasingly stringent emission regulations, environmental concerns and fluctuating fuel prices can now make a compelling case for genset hybridisation with renewable technologies. Upcoming reports 'Diesel Generator Set Future Developments and Alternative Technologies 2019-2029' examine the future market in the context of the growing use of natural gas gensets as well as the various alternative low/zero emission technologies that are available.

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With their low up-front costs and round the clock power availability, it is easy to see why diesel gensets have proliferated within sectors such as mining, oil & gas, telecoms and military. Recently the plummeting costs of solar means that replacing at least a portion of installed genset capacity with solar panels and/or?battery?storage systems can have payback periods as short as 2-3 years. In this report the growing future demand for diesel gensets is modelled alongside the market penetration of alternative power generating technologies such as solar, wind and fuel cells. Profiles and interviews with key genset manufacturers and renewable technology developers are included as well as market segmentation by region and genset size.

It is widely accepted that there is a growing energy supply - demand gap globally, which some estimate will be around 100GW by 2020. The report finds that this will create favourable conditions in the short term for diesel genset use which will see the market value continue to rebound, although not necessarily to pre-2014 levels. In the medium to longer term, a more complex mix of market drivers will ultimately determine installed capacity globally.

On the other hand, renewable energy cannot be used uniformly across the energy system to replace the use of fossil fuels today, mostly because of the variance in the ability of different energy subsectors to switch from fossil fuels to renewables. For example, in some industrial applications such as cement and steel production, emissions come from both the energy use and the production process.?Alternative technologies that can replace current production techniques are not yet available at the scale needed, so it is expected that these techniques will persist in the short to medium term.

Tightening emissions regulations, environmental concerns and plummeting renewable energy costs are putting increased pressure on the diesel genset industry. As manufacturers and suppliers of generator sets look to adapt to a changing energy system, there are a range of key technology developments that will play a crucial role in shaping future use.