Japanese Generator Brands

Categories of Japanese Generator Brands

The Japanese Generator brands can be easily categorized into two major groups by their operating fuel type, as follows.

1. Diesel Generators (DGs)
2. Petrol or Gasoline Generators (PGs)

The major Diesel Generator brands not much in to manufacturing gasoline generators and Gasoline generator brands not much in to the Diesel Generator market. This is a key observation identifiable at the broader view on the Japanese Generator manufacturing industry.

Other key identification observed is Gasoline generator brands own their own engine part while majority of the DG brands does not manufacture their own engine for their DGs except Yanmar and Mitsubishi. But main products of both Yanmar and Mitsubishi are Engine, not the DGs.

Diesel Generator (DG) Brands

• Denyo
• Airman
• Nippon Sharyo
• Yanmar
• Shindaiwa
• Mitsubishi
• Komatzu
• Kubota

Denyo

Denyo leads the market in Diesel Generator segment with a significant lead in the world, with its Japanese competitors easily. The reason could be that, they only focused on the Generator Alternator and Assembling part rather than manufacturing their own engines. Denyo Generators mostly equipped with Japanese Engines like Hino, Isuzu, Yanmar, Mitsubishi, Kubota, Komatsu etc. The compactness and fuel efficiency along with robustness are the key advantages of Denyo.

Airman

Airman comes second in the Japanese generator brands though their focus is very much similar like Denyo. Generator alternator part is the main focus of Airman, while using Japanese engines as of Denyo. The electrical part including AVR which both uses three phase sensing, use same fundamentals, but the parts are not replaceable between two. The soundproof canopy is also look same but one can easily differentiate between two easily from air vents design, door locks and panel board etc.

Nippon Sharyo & Shindaiwa

Both these too follow the Denyo and Airman in terms of design, where they manufacture the alternator part and use readily available Japanese industrial engines and assemble. However electrical part including AVR is using their own version and can not be replaceable.

Yanmar – Mitsubishi – Komatzu – Kubota

All of these brands share common feature, where all are Engine manufacturers. They use their own engine to their generators but alternator part may not be from their own. Since they use dedicated engine models, sometimes spare parts for engines which are too old, might hard to find. Since Denyo, Airman, Nippon & Shindaiwa uses uses very common industrial engines, spare parts are typically available even for 30 year old machines, mainly due to reconditioned and second hand availability.

Gasoline Generator Brands

• Honda
• Yamaha
• Hitachi

Honda Vs Yamaha

Honda leads the Japanese gasoline generator market although tight competition by Yamaha. Yamaha is now equally manufacture both Diesel and Gasoline generators for domestics and low end segments, though Honda is not much into the Diesel generator manufacturing. Small portable Invertor generators is more popular from both Honda & Yamaha and equally perform well in operational and maintenance aspect as well. Further, both are in similar price range and offers hard to select one over other for invertor type portable domestic generators.

Hitachi

Even though Hitachi manufacture gasoline domestic type small generators, their main focus is into large scale power plants such as Gas, Diesel, Biomass & Wind turbine MW scale generators more precisely called commercial power plants.