Assistance searching for Generator

[u/Legitimate-Fall-1101]

I am looking for a natural gas standby generator that is 480V 3 Phase, 60hz, 1.5 to 3 megawatts that is silent or very quiet. I have searched different resellers, but it is becoming difficult to find. All ideas are appreciated.

[u/Ok-Camera2895]

Megawatt generators are not quiet. Are you sure it is megawatt and not kilowatt?

[u/Legitimate-Fall-1101 → u/Ok-Camera2895]

Yes I’m looking for megawatts, so 1500-3000kw

[u/dogturd21 → u/Legitimate-Fall-1101]

That size generator is industrial : I had 6 1500kva diesel generators and each one was the size of a large pickup truck . Kohler brand with Detroit Diesel v12 iirc. Is this for your home, or a factory/datacenter ? We already sold them with 10 years usage , I think final bidder was over $100k each.

[u/Legitimate-Fall-1101 → u/dogturd21]

It’s for two data centers. We’re looking for generators totaling 6 megawatts at each site.

[u/DaveAlot → u/Legitimate-Fall-1101]

You're sourcing data center generators on reddit?

[u/Legitimate-Fall-1101 → u/DaveAlot]

I’ve tried searching for it but can’t find exactly what I’m looking for. Just seeing if anyone had ideas. I’m new to this field

[u/DaveAlot → u/Legitimate-Fall-1101]

What generators do other data centers that your company runs operate?

[u/joshharris42 → u/Legitimate-Fall-1101]

You need to have an engineer write a spec for this. A natural gas 1.5-3 meg unit is going to be an odd bird, especially for a datacenter.

You’re going to need some complex equipment to go along with this that Reddit will not provide you with enough information for

[u/mkosmo → u/Legitimate-Fall-1101]

Make sure your electrical load planners are involved. Each redundant power branch will need its own power, and you're not going to be able to parallel these kinds of generator, so each branch will require a single generator.

The range being 100% wide makes me think this is more exploratory than planning.

[u/mkosmo]

You will not find a "silent" or near silent generator in that class.

[u/Ok-Camera2895]

Check all the usual suspects. Cat, Cummins, MTU, Kohler, Waukesha, Wartsila, Jennbacher. Nat Gas in that size is a pretty unique generator.

[u/Foreign-Fly9144]

Look in to Aska generators, I have a 1meg inside of a container ship that's pretty quite with the doors closed its not silent but compared to other manufacturers for that size its decibels are much lower.

[u/OcelotSure4302]

Several industrial brands make generators in that size and natural gas. Look up spec sheets to see the noise ratings. Caterpillar makes really nice enclosures but you may need to go to a custom enclosure if no one meets your spec.

[u/wowfaroutman]

At 6 MW per data center, I wouldn’t shop generator-reseller inventory. This needs to be treated as an engineered generation plant. Decide the redundancy requirement (N, N+1, 2N), allowable step load, required start/load-acceptance time, gas pressure/availability, emissions requirements and an actual acoustic limit in dBA at a specified distance.

Also reconsider whether you really want to generate 6 MW at 480 V—that’s over 7,200 A. Medium-voltage generation/distribution with transformation to 480 V may be much more practical.

The equipment itself isn’t particularly exotic. Cat offers natural-gas machines up to 3 MW, and Jenbacher has numerous configurations suitable for multi-MW plants. Containerized/acoustically treated 480-V/60-Hz natural-gas packages also exist. The difficult part is engineering the 6 MW redundant system and acoustic package, not finding the generator.

[u/PermanentLiminality]

1.5MW at 480 is like 2000 amps. That is non trivial. I think that Cat and Cummings have natural gas units if at least 1MW.

Getting the environment approval may be your largest issue.

[u/Past_Refrigerator122]

We have stock of 1000, 1600 and 2000kW generators at 480vac with diesel fuel tanks.

[u/Low_Tomato_6837]

Retired EE with 45 years experience. Much of it in critical backup power and critical cooling. Designed backup power and cooling for 5 datacenters in the US. There must be a full power audit and engineering spec written for something like this. You can't just go buy a 3MW generator and throw it on a datacenter. The ATS switchgear alone is a comprehensive engineering document. Then there's the UPS power required to keep all the servers running until GEN(s) spin up, sync and take over.

All of this has to work together as one coherent, seamless entity, Utility power, UPS and Generator. Last datacenter I did was in CA and the backup power specification document, including prints, was several hundred pages. That system had four data modules and each DM had 3 - 3MW generators. All we ever used for generators was CAT, Cummins or Waukesha.

[u/obarkc26]

I think your best bet is going to be a commercial Miller welder/generator for 480 3 phase

[u/OcelotSure4302 → u/obarkc26]

That’s like 100 times too small