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On 11/4/2002 9:37:31 AM 757fixer wrote:
Here's a waste of money from my corner of US.We have pc air and external power at all our gates.And we use them every night.This saves a huge amount of money over running apu's all night.Several months ago one of the power units had a melt down.The gse guys quickly tracked it down to a bad circuit board.Problem is they can't order it because it costs more than $50.00.Ok,no problem,we have a diesel generator we'll use.About 2 weeks later that went down with a bad alternator.Guess what!It costs more than $50.00.That leaves us one alternative,run the apu all night at a fuel burn of about 100 lb/hr.Not to mention the additional wear and tear on the apu.Now this went on for several weeks until someone finally approved the purchase of an alternator.The external power still isn't fixed.Here's the kicker,our electrical bill is included in the rent.Doesn't matter how much or little we use.So theres no need for us to even be burning the diesel fuel.We've already bought the electricty from the state.
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757fixer , you are absolutely right about the APU's. I see them in use on the Hangar ramp when even nobody's actually working the plane sometimes
Then as you mentioned..the price of a Kilowatt hour is a great deal less than the burn rate of fuel on an APU...and let us not forget, We don't hedge on our fuel..So we pay current demand price levels.
Then you have to figure in that APU's are like any other Gas Turbine Engine...they break and have to be Over-hauled..this I can assure you is no cheap propositon either. Effective Utilization of our resources would be a big savings to us....You know it..and I know it...Some refuse to accept the need for change in our way of thinking and doing things...otherwise , moe and more PEOPLE will continue to be sacrificed to make up the difference.[img src='http://www.usaviation.com/idealbb/images/smilies/7.gif']