ELECTRICAL & ELECTRONICS GENSET OPTIONS
FINNING
Short and long term rental : what ’ s the difference ?
Buying a generator set outright is only feasible if a business has the funds to afford the initial investment and is working on a long-term project that requires stable off-grid power . Because in most businesses this is not the case , rental is a compelling option . But not all rental options were made equal . Here Dean Harris , Sales Engineer at Energyst UK & Ireland , explains the difference between short and long-term genset rental .
Renting a genset allows businesses to avoid paying out a large initial sum . One example is a recycling plant , which recently took out a five-year contract because it does not have access to a mains power supply for the foreseeable future . The customer did not want to spend three quarters of a million pounds on the three gensets that it required , so opted for rental to bridge the power gap .
Rental also gives businesses the opportunity to have a genset on site in a matter of days , rather than waiting 16 to 20 weeks for a purchased system to be custom built and installed . Rental customers can also pass the maintenance costs and challenges that come with purchasing onto their supplier .
If a business decides to rent , there are two main options — short-term and long-term rental . Short-term rental can be from a few days to just under a month and long-term rental typically is anywhere up to two years , but some businesses opt for even longer periods of up to ten years .
SHORT-TERM RENTAL
Businesses can quickly get their project ’ s power requirements met by opting for a short-term rental . A rental genset can be quickly introduced to prevent downtime when an existing embedded generator is faulty and needs maintenance work or for projects that only last a few days or weeks .
Consider this example . A company performs five major services each year to check its systems can run up to 2000 kVA , during which the gensets powering the operation must be taken offline . The business could not justify spending half a million pounds
Businesses can quickly get their project ’ s power requirements met by opting for a short-term rental .
on a supplementary genset , only to use it for five or six weeks of the year . Instead , it chose to rent a genset during testing , saving footprint space , the large initial investment and ongoing maintenance costs .
LONG-TERM RENTAL
In addition to the financial benefits of renting a genset , customers can also pass on the operational costs to the rental supplier when renting long-term . The rental supplier can monitor the performance , load and operating hours to see when the genset needs maintenance work , rather than the business carrying this out themselves , providing peace of mind . The renter can also hand over fuel management to the supplier , as well as negotiate a cheaper price per litre when buying in bulk .
Long-term rental can be suitable for standby applications for critical facilities , such as hospitals , airports or data centres . Critical facilities have stringent testing requirements to ensure the equipment kicks in when needed , so leaving this in the hands of experts can save time , money and hassle .
In addition , long-term rental provides flexibility to businesses during times of changing demand . If a manufacturing business wants to extend its production line and increase the power supplied , it can easily swap out the current rental genset for a bigger one or rent an additional system , without investing large sums of money for the expansion .
Ultimately , the value of the rental agreement depends on the project length and the specific requirements of each business . Renting for a longer period will reduce the daily rental rate , but short-term rentals provide more flexibility for businesses who may want a genset for a week . Fully understanding the power requirements of each project before renting a genset will help businesses make an informed decision .
Visit the Energyst website to learn more about our genset rental options www . finning . com / Energyst .
64 PECM Issue 52