Everyone Loves Reciprocating Engines
- Gionata VISCONTI
- Jan 5
- 1 min read
Everyone loves reciprocating engine power plants on paper.
They are sold as modular, flexible, fast to deploy, and tolerant. And, to be fair, they can be all of that.
The problem usually starts after commissioning.
When the EPC is gone, warranties begin to blur, and the plant is expected to deliver megawatt-hours every single day, without excuses. Operating a reciprocating engine plant is not difficult in theory.
It is difficult in practice, because these machines are unforgiving to sloppy assumptions made much earlier — during development and contracting — when operations and maintenance are treated as something that can be “optimized later.”
They cannot.
Reciprocating engines are living systems.
They accumulate hours, not opinions. Every operating hour moves the asset closer to an intervention that cannot be postponed without consequences. Miss a planned outage, stretch maintenance intervals, delay overhauls, and the plant will collect that debt quietly, with interest. Availability rarely collapses suddenly; it erodes cylinder by cylinder, alarm by alarm, until someone starts wondering why output no longer matches the nameplate.
Fuel, oil, water, staffing — these are often labeled as “manageable.”
In reality, fuel variability, weak supply chains, poor discipline in fluid analysis, or undertrained crews are not edge cases. In many markets, they are the base case. Engines will tolerate abuse for a while. Then they will not forgive it.
This is where many assets start underperforming.
Not because of technology, not because of OEMs, but because operations were treated as an administrative detail instead of a core design decision.
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