standby power generators: The back-up for the worst case scenario

At the end of April 2025, the Iberian Peninsula experienced one of the most significant power failures in recent memory. At approximately 12:30 p.m., the Spanish electricity grid lost 15 gigawatts of generation—likely renewable—in a sudden five-second collapse. The blackout impacted over 53 million people across Spain and Portugal, with ripple effects reaching into southern France. Amid widespread outages, critical infrastructure held steady. Data centers remained online, airport systems stayed operational, and key services were uninterrupted— also thanks to mtu standby generators and Kinetic Powerpacks from Rolls-Royce.

Growing demand for mtu solutions: Global energy demand on the rise  

From airports and hospitals to data centres or companies with particularly sensitive production processes, such as the semiconductor or pharmaceutical  industry: Electricity must never be absent. That is why mtu standby power generators are often found in these facilities. As soon as the public power supply is no longer sufficient or is interrupted, the diesel gensets take over and supply the necessary power. Accordingly, the requirements for the standby power supply are extraordinarily high. "Rolls-Royce is at home in this segment," says Dennis Zumbach, Sales Director Power Generation in Europe, Africa and the Middle East at Rolls-Royce's Power Systems Division.          

The demand for standby power generators is currently booming like never before. "The biggest driver is mainly the data centre industry which requires full capacity utilization," explains Zumbach.

The reason for this is the steadily increasing energy demand of data centres. With video streaming, Industry 4.0 and growing AI requirements, the demand for computing power has increased massively over the last years.  

mtu standby power units: from data centre to hospital

This is why many mtu standby power units can be found in data centres and other critical industries. For example, AVK, as the largest supplier of standby power solutions in the UK, has been working exclusively with Rolls-Royce for over 20 years and has in the meantime delivered and installed several hundred mtu standby power units of the 2000 and 4000 series.

What can mtu standby power generators do?

Whether in the freezing cold of Siberia or during an earthquake in North America: mtu standby power generators must work reliably. In California, for example, the earth can shake up to 10,000 times a year, while the standby generator has to function perfectly. On a special test stand, the mtu gensets were tested under conditions similar to an earthquake.       

Uninterruptible power supply: The mtu Kinetic PowerPack

Particularly impressive: The gensets can start extremely quickly. After just a few seconds, the diesel gensets are working at full speed and take over the complete power supply of a plant. The short interim period is bridged by batteries or kinetic mass storage to guarantee an uninterrupted power supply.

Kinetic mass storage devices? They are an essential component of dynamic UPS (uninterruptible power supply) technology. This technology, which at Rolls-Royce is called mtu Kinetic PowerPack, consists of a diesel engine coupled via an electromagnetic clutch to a kinetic energy storage device - in simple terms, a flywheel weighing several tonnes. The mtu Kinetic PowerPacks guarantee a reliable and environmentally friendly uninterruptible power supply and energy processing without batteries.

During normal operation, the kinetic energy storage compensates for current and voltage fluctuations, which can cause problems with highly sophisticated and sensitive IT equipment and consequently lead to major financial losses, among other things. Even if the primary power source fails completely, the stored kinetic energy is sufficient to bridge the time until the diesel engine is running at full speed.  

Sustainable standby power supply with HVO, hydrogen and Co.

The demand for climate-neutral solutions is also increasing for the standby generator market. Rolls-Royce is taking concrete steps in this direction.  

A milestone on this path is the already completed approval of mtu engines for use with sustainable fuels of the EN15940 standard. This includes HVO (Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil), which is produced on the basis of vegetable and animal fats, often from waste, not from plants grown specifically for this purpose. HVO can reduce particulate emissions by up to 80 percent and CO2 emissions by up to 90 percent.  

"The great thing about HVO is that you can use the fuel in our engines without limiting performance. Especially in England, many data centres have already converted to using HVO," says Dennis Zumbach.

With our various mtu backup power solutions, the worst-case scenario can become just another routine test passed.