15 Advantages and Disadvantages of Diesel Power Plant | Diesel Energy

In this article, we are going to study- what are the advantages and disadvantages of diesel power plants.

Based on construction, working role, feature, function, limitations, and many more specializations, the diesel power plant has some advantages and disadvantages.

Let’s study one by one,

Advantages (or Pros) of Diesel Power Plant

1. The construction of diesel power plant is simple.
2. The diesel power plant can be easily installed at any place where the demand for power is very less.
3. Time required to start and stop this power plant is very minimum as compare to time take by other plants to start and stop.
4. It starts quickly and easily picks up the load variations.
5. The maintenance cost is minimal as compared to the thermal and steam power plants.
6. It requires minimum quantity of water which is essential for cooling purpose.
7. For the installation of the power plant, sufficient area that is required is very less.
8. This plant does not require more labours or workers under operation conditions.
9. The diesel power plant has more thermal efficiency as compared to the steam power plant.
10. It is widely used as a standby set in compact areas (like as hospitals, cinema houses, industrial machineries, etc.) that can provide a continuous power supply to the load.

Disadvantages (or Cons) of Diesel Power Plant

11. The running cost of diesel power plant is high because diesel fuel is more expensive. 
12. It is not much comfortable under the overload condition and long duartion.
13. This plant has limited power generation and storages capacity than thermal and hydroelectric power plants.
14. The maintanance charge and lubrication cost are very high.
15. This diesel power plant produces limited amount of electricity (approximately 50MW).
16. The life span of the diesel energy is relatively short.

Hopefully, I have covered all the basic pros and cons of diesel power plants over the thermal power plant and the hydroelectric power plant. If you have any queries or doubts, comment below.

Read some Pros & Cons of other power plants :

• Hydroelectric Power Plant
• Thermal (or Steam) Power Plant

Thanks for Reading!

Dipali Chaudhari

I have completed master in Electrical Power System. I work and write technical tutorials on the PLC, MATLAB programming, and Electrical on DipsLab.com portal.

Sharing my knowledge on this blog makes me happy.  And sometimes I delve in Python programming.