Operational maintenance cost of diesel/HFO engine 2

[tranzholik]

What is the typical maintenance cost of a 2500KW diesel/HFO generator? I have found conflicting numbers on web, which is not very helpful so far. Thanks in advance. Cheers

 

[patprimmer]

Maybe the info is variable because some significant variables are not quantified.

Regards
Pat
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[catserveng]

As Pat said, a lot of variables affect O&M costs.

Some things you should define before trying to obtain those costs,

How many engine operating hours per year at what load factor?

Costs for what term, 1 year, 5 years, 10 years? Makes a big difference depending on overhaul schedules and major maintenance items.

Where in the world are you?

When you say diesel, are you talking DFM, #2 diesel or ULSD?

For HFO, what type of fuel exactly are you considering, big difference in 180cst vs 350cst fuel. Also what kinds of contaminents?

Exactly define what you expect to be covered. Engine only? Engine and generator? Or engine and BOP?

To what level are you providing service internally by your operations staff versus bringing in contractors to do some of the work? Such as, will the operators be doing the daily, weekly, monthly checks and minor maintenenace such as oil and filter changes, and you'll use contractor labor for major maintenance?

Depending on where the plant is you can have considerable costs in shipping and customs duties for parts and comsumables, do you know if this affects you and what those costs are?

It used to take a team of three people over a week at the dealer I worked at to come up with a comprehensive O&M cost worksheet, especially when a customer was comparing HFO to diesel. There is a lot to look at to make sure you get the right numbers. And a lot of things you have to make you best guess on, like fuel and lube oil costs, shipping and labor costs, especially on longer term plans.

Mike L.

 

[jmw]

One of the main reasons for the introduction of the ViscoMaster fuel heater control viscometer was so that MAK could log real time fuel quality data. The conventional viscometers, apart from being very expensive to maintain and often dirty or needing maintenance, only reported dynamic viscosity and so could only control the fuel heaters.
The ViscoMaster reports:
density, density at 15C, density at 98C (Centrifuge operating temperature), kinematic viscosity, kinematic viscosity at 50C or 100C, CCAI and CII.
In other words, what people said they were burning often wasn't what they were burning.
During trials of the Viscomaster one consignment of fuel arrived that had so much water in it (replacing the fuel the driver of the tanker had presumably sold off on route) that "you can take a shower in it".
ALso fuels have been dumping grounds for used motor oil and used dry cleaning fluids, and inadvertently contaminated with tank cleaning chemicals etc.
There are no end of scams and errors that mean fuel quality is far from what it should be.
So when the oil record shows ISO 8217 compliant 380cst fuel used and refers to a sample and a certificate of quality, as often as not the sample and certificate describe a fuel the engine never saw.
So MAK log the data to the engine's "black box recorder" because this gives them a handle on why some engines need more maintenance than others.
Wartsila talk aout the next step which is parameter based enginer management. That is, improving performance (and maintenance issues) by monitoring various fuel and operating parameters and intelligently managing the engine.

Incidentally, heavy fuel engines have undergone a significant transition over recent years with a great many innovations including such things as common rail injection etc. and deliver more power per cylinder with longer time between service intervals.
Any reported maintenance costs would be general and probably useless unless they can take into account a great manyy different factors. IT may be that you need data specific to your engine type and year of manufacture.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com