Failure to start is the most significant avoidable cause of diesel generator malfunction. Over 80% of failures to start are caused by battery problems. Genset customers invest significant amounts of money purchasing and maintaining generators. Yet the Achilles heel of these large, costly machines is a commodity product little changed since its invention in the late 1800s.

Today most gensets do not include any means to detect that the starting battery has deteriorated, and may not be fit to start the engine. Genset failure can cause large economic losses and, in some cases, loss of life. End-users have tolerated this situation because there has been no practical, cost-effective battery failure detection system.

Despite advances in nearly every aspect of standby and emergency diesel generator performance, failure to start continues to be the biggest avoidable cause of diesel generator failures: Weak or undercharged starting batteries are the most common cause of standby power system failures. Negligent battery maintenance is the most common reason for failure of critical power systems.

This is a problem because the diesel generator set (genset) is an insurance policy protecting against electric power outages or electricity priced at peak rates. Like most insurance, users expect it to deliver, without excuses, as promised, when needed. An organization’s investment in a genset defines the application as “very important” or “critical”, even though some jaded end-users purchase grudgingly “just to satisfy Code”. Codes and standards exist because people died and property was lost in avoidable accidents.

Hard data on the total genset start failure rate is not easy to find:  About 1% of all nuclear power plant diesels will fail to start when required. (Nuclear plant diesels typically use compressed air starting systems, generally considered more reliable than electric starting.) Standby diesels in medical facilities do not perform nearly so well  (i.e. worse than 1% start failure rate). Given that the best maintained gensets fail to start 1% of the time, a reasonable assumption for the overall failure rate of electric start sets might be three to four times worse than gensets used at nuclear plants. A 3% to 4% failure rate means that more than ten thousand gensets in the US – insurance that customers paid good money for – are not available for use on any given day. This is an enormous amount of dead iron representing potentially large economic losses and a customer satisfaction problem for genset makers and service organizations.

The root cause of most starting problems is the battery. The number one reason standby generators fail to start is due to dead starting batteries. Over 80% of all starting failures are from this cause. Even when kept fully charged and maintained, lead-acid starting batteries are subject to deterioration over time and must be periodically replaced when they no longer hold a proper charge. In contrast to modern self-diagnosing digital electronic technology, the lead-acid battery is an anachronism. First invented in the late 1800s, it has, maintenance-wise, evolved little since then. It is perishable when off charge, has a shorter lifetime than electronic equipment, needs regular water replenishment, can be overcharged or undercharged easily and has no built-in warning mechanism prior to failure. We continue to use the lead-acid battery only because its purchase price is low compared to the alternatives. What’s needed is a way to detect the need for battery replacement before engine start failure.

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Conclusion:

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