# 2 cylinder Lister diesel knockoff for power generation?



## Tambourineman (Aug 6, 2014)

Is anyone familiar with using a Lister diesel for electrical power generation? Lister is OOB, but others now make knockoffs.

They are supposed to be simple, reliable and durable. The originals had no electrical system of any kind. Once started they would run until they ran out of fuel or were shut down by the operator.

This is two cylinder Lister, set up with electric start and alternator. It can be hand started also. About 12.2 HP.










This is a 6.1 HP hand started Lister diesel engine with 3000 watt generator. It uses very low quantities of fuel compared to gas generators. 

These can be run on fried grease.










The 3,000 watt model is a single cylinder indirect injection 650 RPM 6 HP engine with a cast iron block and cast iron sleeve with a 1.43 liter displacement and is water cooled. it uses .163 gallons per hour at 1/4 load and runs for just over 15 hours. It uses .296 at full. it is about a yard long and high and 2 feet wide (without the coolant tank I think) and weighs 950 lbs.

I started out thinking I wanted a natural gas generator, but I am now considering this diesel/biofuel one as well as this eliminates the problem in routing gas from the meter in the front of my house to the rear, or my garage further to the rear.


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## Waypoint (Jan 28, 2014)

Given your description of small lot size and close neighbors, the noise might be a problem. 

Also the quality of the AC sine wave might not be what you want. Alternator-type gens with no power conditioning are OK for bulk consumption like heating elements and lights...but motorized devices like refrigerator compressors and heating system blowers/pumps become unhappy with poor quality 60Hz AC.

Something like the Listeroid would be good for copying the time-tested diesel submarine power management model. Use the gen to charge a bank of deep-cycle batteries, then use a pure-sine inverter to convert the stored DC energy into a clean 60Hz sine to feed your house.

Very expensive, though. For less than $3K including the Honda EU3000is, Reliant 6-circuit transfer switch kit, and electrician labor...we live comfortably duirng power outages on around 4-5 gallons of gas per 24 hours.

With our original EU2000i setup we were in less than $2K and ran on 3 gallons per 24 hours. Just couldn't run the microwave. And after the 2011 snowstorm and 5 days of cooking on the outdoor grill, the upgrade to 3KW of generator was worth it during 12 days of outage following Sandy.


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