Higher Diesel Generator

The investors who are support in for their cut of the STOR largesse are not going to want to see margins eroded by the need to replace or update at noteworthy cost their gen-sets.  The costs will be passed on when the government’s operating reserve becomes a hostage to fortune upon which it is ever more reliant due to its fascination with renewable at the expense of conservative energy generating plant.

In the AMPS piece it is clear the power systems manufacturers have already been anticipating what this means for their profits.  As Richard Cottrell, the General Manager at the Perkins Engines Company Large Engine Centre in Stafford makes clear:

France, Germany and Switzerland and other European countries have their own regulations. India, for example, regulates diesel engines up to 800 kVA, whereas the EU only regulates [non-road, portable genets] up to 560 kW.

Additionally, the emissions convention set for electric power engines are several years behind highway engines, so as Perkins also manufactures on-highway engines we are less frightened about more stringent emissions legislation. Our electric power division in Stafford, UK will be able to leverage Perkins in-house expertise and knowledge that our brothers have in Peterborough, as well as our parent company Caterpillar has around the world.

In other words, they can bring adjustment solutions to the market quickly – but it will be at a cost to the owners of the gen-sets.  Perkins stands to do well out of a change in the convention, as does its fellow Caterpillar company, FG Wilson (now Caterpillar NI), which is Europe’s largest company of diesel & gas generator sets and power generating solutions.

Interestingly last summer, FG Wilson as it was then, began to implement a significant redundancy involuntary across its plants at Larne, Monks town and Belfast when it decided to move the assemble of retail size gen-sets to China because that’s where its major market for the units is. A Caterpillar employee tells me its strategy is to build its apparatus as close to its customer market as possible.  So it is noteworthy and very telling that the manufacture of large gen-sets of the type used in STOR diesel parks has been kept in Northern Ireland, as demand for them in the UK is robust.

Ultimately the inescapable fact is that the UK government has put this eye wateringly costly STOR in place at our expense and we could soon see our supreme government in Brussels take regulatory measures that further add to the cost, which we will also be expected to cover through our energy bills.  We are in a lose – lose – lose situation and despite the huge implications for energy customers the mainstream media and the likes of its eco-activist, climate defending superstars like the BBC’s Roger Harrabin, remains silent.