I would like to calculate actual fuel consumption on a diesel generator used for power generation. The obvious answer would be to use a flow-meter, but for various reasons (including price!) that might not be practical. My question is, is it possible to use another indicator (such as engine hours, RPM, etc.) to accurately estimate the fuel consumption? Or in other words, if such methods are used, how inaccurate can/would they be and what are the reasons/factors for this?
Thanks
For an ac generator - you may find that the rpm doesn't vary greatly with load and hence give much of an indication of fuel consumption. The position of the fuel rack would be better.
What you could do is to put a range of loads on the generator and, for each load, measure how long it will run on, say, a pint of fuel. I don't suggest allowing it to run out of fuel - use a tank with two marks, 1 pint apart, and time the engine between marks - stopping the engine when it get to the bottom mark.
You should then have the makings of a graph of load against fuel consumption. All you then need to do is the measure the load at regular intervals and read the fuel consumption off the graph.. It isn't going to be as accurate as a flow gauge but may do if your load is pretty steady..
A yardstick figure which I use for planning purposes for diesel generator fuel consumption is ~185 to 250 gm/kwh. This figure will apply for generators over about 50kVA.
Go to any of the generator manufacturer's websites (Lister, Petter, Catepillar etc) and download some datasheets - the figures for a specific genrator will be there.
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