On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 10:36:18 +0100, wrote:

Seemed an affable fellow, gave me a potted history of his success
which was partly due the early stages of the North sea oil and gas
industry.
A lot of equipment needed 60hz due to it's American origins but the
European suppliers of portable generators kept sending out 50hz
units.
The hirers would speed the engines up but the slower running Diesels
used such as Gardners and other traditional names became unreliable
with such treatment. Mr Ag had started to use generators with higher
revving engines such as Lombardini and these could be speed up with
little detriment. Hence his generator hire firm got a reputation for
reliability and he did well.

Well, when I was working in the field it was common for gensets to be
specified for 50 or 60Hz and easy for operators to change the output
to suit, from one application to another. Any engine that couldn't
cope with a slight overspeed to take it up to a 60Hz output was a pile
of scrap in the first place and most certainly deserved no place in a
genset maker's line-up.

What would happen from time to time was that a customer would specify
a particular engine - like a Cummins, Gardner or Blackstone and we
would supply it, while maybe having slight misgivings about it. There
were favourite engines for certain customers and some of them might
not have been up to the demands placed on them. In general though, we
certainly had no problems with 60Hz sets popping their clogs early.

In the very early days of the North Sea oilfields it's possible the
situation he described did happen, but that was before my time in it
and I can't say for sure. Even then, the UK genset industry wasn't any
stranger to the customers' need for a 60Hz set.


Aggreko did well by undercutting the competition, aggressive selling
and offering terms and deals the others didnt, wouldn't or couldn't.
Once Aggreko got to a certain size they were able to buy in bulk that
the others couldn't (many smaller UK makers didn't have the turnover
or spare cash to buy in and were often hampered by management that
were half-dead).

That's all fine - just business and many of the other makers were
asleep on their feet, thus allowing Aggreko to move in.

Doesn't change my opinion of them, though.