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Solar vs diesel generator: the real cost over five years

Fuel, maintenance and downtime add up fast. Here is the five-year comparison for a typical Ghazni shop.

2 May 2026 · 5 min read

A generator is cheap to buy and expensive to own. A solar system is the opposite. Over five years the gap becomes very large for any business running daily hours in Ghazni.

A shop running a 5 kVA generator for eight hours a day burns roughly 1.5 litres per hour. That is around 3,500 litres per year, plus oil changes, filters and repairs. Even at conservative fuel prices, five-year running cost exceeds the entire installed price of an equivalent solar system.

Solar has no fuel bill, no queue at the fuel station and no engine noise. The realistic ongoing cost is panel cleaning a few times a year and one battery replacement in year eight to twelve.

The best answer for many Ghazni businesses is hybrid: solar plus battery for daily load, with the existing generator kept as a rare backup rather than a daily expense.

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