Cursa Fuel Co. / Learn / Generator fuel use
Generators
It depends on size and load, but you can estimate it closely enough to plan. Here is the rule of thumb and why it drives your outage supply plan.
There is no single number, because a generator's fuel use scales with how big it is and how hard it is working. A small standby unit sips fuel. A large facility generator under heavy load drinks it. Load matters as much as size: the same machine burns more when it is carrying more.
What you can do is estimate closely enough to plan. Take the unit's burn rate at your typical load, multiply by the hours you need to cover, and you have your fuel demand for an outage.
Same tank, same generator. Heavier load, shorter runtime.
People consistently overestimate how long a tank lasts under real load. A generator that seems to "have plenty of fuel" can empty in a day when it is carrying a facility. That gap between assumption and reality is where outages turn into failures.
Know your burn, then know your refuel point. Once you know roughly how fast the tank empties at your load, you know when fuel has to arrive. We build the delivery schedule around that number so the generator never wins the race to empty.
Tell us your generator and your typical load and we will help you estimate the burn, the runtime, and the refuel cadence a long outage would need. Then we keep it fed.
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