A client called us in December. They were building an ice plant and needed a 2MW generator. They had a specific picture in their head: 2000kW, portable, mounted on a trailer.
They’d been looking at our site and found an older MTU 4000 series with over 300 hours on it.
They didn’t buy it. They ended up walking away with a 2007 Cummins instead. It was a 2250kW machine, stationary on a skid, delivered to their lot for right under $400,000.
You Typically Don’t Shop Local for Megawatts
If you’re buying a 100kW generator, you have a local market to access. There are dozens of units available on any given Tuesday online, on a marketplace, or at a local dealer. You can be picky. If one doesn’t fit, wait a week and another will pop up.
That reality disappears north of a megawatt.
When this client called, we had multiple machines in that class sitting in our Colorado yard: some 2250s and that 2000kW trailer unit. The client initially wanted something close by to save on freight. But the odds of finding multiple 2MW machines within driving distance of their plant were near zero. The alternative was chasing single units across the country. They did the math too: one flight, one yard, and their electrician could look at three units in a single afternoon.
Paying for the Idea of Mobility
The trailer was the driving factor behind that $500,000 price tag, and nobody had actually asked the client if they needed it.
Mobility on a genset costs real money. You’re paying for axles, brakes, DOT compliance, and usually a package of voltage taps and breakers. If you run a rental fleet or move between job sites, you need it.
This ice plant was pouring a concrete slab and that generator was going to get dropped behind the building and stay there until it was scrapped. They weren’t buying mobility, they were buying the idea of it. At 2MW, the idea of a trailer is expensive enough to change the class of equipment you can afford.
By dropping the trailer requirement, they looked at a stationary 2250kW Cummins listed around $375,000. They took the money they would have spent on axles that would never roll, and used it to buy a machine that was eight years newer and 250kW larger.
And that extra 250kW mattered. An ice plant is just a building full of compressors, and compressors are massive motors. When a big motor starts across the line, it pulls several times its running current. If the generator can’t hold the voltage, the whole bus sags. The client asked for 2000kW. The stationary unit happened to be 2250kW. The extra headroom was cheap insurance.
The Rules That Don’t Bend
You can drop a trailer requirement to save a hundred grand, but you can’t compromise on everything.
That 2007 Cummins is a six-lead machine at 277/480V. A six-lead isn’t field-reconnectable like a twelve-lead alternator. It is a 480-volt generator, and it will be one for the rest of its life.
For an ice plant running 480V compressors, it was a perfect match. If their building had been 208V, it would be a 20-ton paperweight. You can’t fix the wrong voltage after the machine hits the ground.
Voltage doesn’t negotiate. Neither does physical footprint or local prime-power emissions laws. Figure out your hard lines before you shop, because paying for flexibility you don’t need is how you waste budget.
The Used Equipment Warranty Myth
Everyone asks about warranties on older machines. Here is the reality: past the manufacturer’s expiration, warranties on used multi-megawatt generators don’t exist. Caterpillar might technically reinstate one if you jump through a year of hoops, but nobody else will.
We own what we sell. It’s sitting on our lot. We inspected it, serviced it, and ran it under load, and we keep the load bank records. More importantly, a buyer can fly out and stand next to the machine while we do it. The only alternative to watching heavy iron make power in person is buying it blind from photographs.
The Bottom Line
We quoted freight into the deal—loading, insured transport, and delivery to their lot. It went out the gate at right under $400,000.
Delivered Unit Profile
- Make/Year: 2007 Cummins DQKH-5857073
- Output: 2250kW / 2812.5 kVA
- Electrical: 277/480V three-phase, 6-lead, 3383 Amps
- Enclosure: Fully enclosed, weatherproof, sound attenuated