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Fully-Variable Fan Drives for Generator Sets

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.

Horton's engine cooling experts recently set out to determine if a fully-variable fan drive cooling system could reduce fuel consumption and noise on a 100kW generator set and whether those results might be extrapolated to other generator sets. The result: a test generator set, modified with the Horton fully-variable fan drive cooling system, provided significant fuel savings and noise reduction over the same generator set with a standard cooling fan. It is believed this result can be extended to other generator sets, with similar benefits, depending on the application and environment in which the  generators operate.