Technologies from the on-highway vehicle markets, designed to reduce fuel consumption, noise and pollutants, are slowly migrating to other applications and industries. The latter includes the power generation market, inclusive of stationary and mobile generator sets. While fully-variable fan drives are proven and standard equipment on heavy-duty commercial vehicles (e.g. semi-trucks), as a means to reduce fuel consumption and noise, they are not standard on generator sets. Moreover, their effect on generator set operation has not been deeply studied. The goals of this study were to determine if a fully-variable fan drive cooling system could reduce fuel consumption and noise on a 100 kW generator set and whether those results might be extrapolated to other generator sets. A positive finding could help inform future generator set designs and options and by extension, provide economic and environmental benefits to entities employing generator sets in various applications and environments.
