PR Power has accepted its first delivery of JCB diesel generators, after recently signing a deal to become an official JCB Power Products dealer
Speaking with Plant & Equipment in mid-April, PR Power’s national generator manager Mike Corbett said its first two containers of JCB power products was due to arrive in the next couple of days.
The JCB generators will range in power from 8kVA to 2,500kVA, available for sale Australia- wide.
These add to PR Power’s existing line-up of CPG Cummins, Powerlink Power Systems and Trime lighting tower products, all of which are manufacturers of world-renowned high-quality products.
“PR Power deals with all areas requiring industrial size generators, so that can be from mining and gas fields, through to industry, construction, major infrastructure works, offices, production facilities, utilities, water suppliers, gas suppliers, electricity suppliers… the whole kit and kaboodle,” Corbett says.
“Generally speaking… the existing JCB distribution channels tended to operate in markets different to what ours were – so from JCB’s point of view it’s a great way of making sure that they can optimise their distribution opportunities across a range of different market types.”
For PR Power itself, Corbett adds that there will be a series of features offered by the JCB range, which will appeal to new and existing clients.
“JCB bring that level of quality and consistency which the market is realising it needs more and more, particularly when you talk about something as important as generators,” he says.
“JCB have different engines for different sized generators. They’ve tried to optimise the best engines that they feel will be most effective for that sized unit.”
Each of the generators is fitted with a Mecc Alte alternator and come with a Maux Excitation system, which Corbett says holds a series of benefits over the more common self-excited excitation system.
“They are available for all alternators, it just means you’ve got that those extra features that you may not necessarily know you’re going to need,” he says.
“One of my little sayings is ‘electricity is never important until you don’t have it’, so if you are looking at putting in a generator, you may as well put one in that you know is going to operate when you need it, being either prime or standby.”
Other benefits of the JCB range include improvements made to the recommended service intervals – with most JCB generators recommending between 400–500 hours, instead of the more common 250- hour interval.
“Your long-term operating costs will also be reduced because you have half your service intervals for starters,” Corbett says.
On top of this, units of 60kVA and above come with a built-in remote monitoring system as standard, allowing the operator to keep track of the unit’s servicing needs.
PR Power offers servicing from its three distribution hubs in Queensland, Victoria and Western Australia, with product backup and support across the country through various service networks.
Corbett says he’s found that where the hubs are physically located is often less important to his clients than PR Power’s ability to provide servicing and support with spare parts.
“All the branches run a 24/7 backup service and support number, so when you ring us, you will speak to a PR Power employee,” he says.
“That is part of being a service solution provider, that if you have a problem and you ring up and speak to somebody it doesn’t go to a call centre, it doesn’t go to message bank – you speak to somebody from within the company who can get the problem solved.”
PR Power offers a prime warranty for 12 months, and a standby warranty for 24 months, which customers can call JCB directly to handle, rather than requiring users to go to the effort of contacting a subcomponent manufacturer.
One of the things that JCB does differently from other generator manufacturers is that warranty is handled directly through them.
Corbett says that becoming a JCB Power Products dealer provides PR Power another option to best meet its customers’ needs.
“That means we can look at tailoring the solutions to what the application will be and that can be from embedded generators, it can be a synchronising generator, it could be standalone… all those sorts of specific applications are what we tend to specialise in,” he says.
“PR Power will always endeavour to provide the best equipment, expertise, and solutions for the power generation market. It could be as simple or as complicated as it needs to be, and we have got the in-house engineering and expertise to be able to custom design and make the solution work further for each individual application.”
For more information regarding JCB diesel generators you can contact PR Power by calling 1300 399 499 or via www.prpower.com.au