Disclaimers:
1)The Woodward 1712 or 1724 may cost more than the Lister.
2)I only know how well this governor works on high speed diesels.
3)I have absolutely no experience with this governor on a Lister, or any other slow speed engine where speed varies each time the cylinder fires ---- yeah, it'll see it speeding up and slowing down a few times a second, and try to compensate by moving the fuel rack between each power stroke if not set correctly!
4)It very well may be worth while contacting Woodward to see if this application would even work. They've been in the governor business for a long time.
Ok, on to the post:
Want to be exact? Obtain a Woodward 1712 Electronic Governor. Most Caterpillar power systems dealers can order you one. Or at least they can order all the "replacement parts" to make one, if they're not allowed to explicitly sell the whole packaged governor without a gen-set to go with it.
Here's how to adapt it to your Lister:
Put a sprocket on the generator pulley for the speed sensor pickup. For 3600 RPM, you'll need roughly 72 teeth, but don't quote me on that. The number of teeth are required to give that many pulses per revolution, so the governor can have that level granularity in it's sensing of speed. Basically, it needs to make sensing readings many times per second so it can control fuel as fast as possible. I think you can go with less teeth, but the governor won't be as precise, and won't respond as fast.
Disconnect the Lister's Governor. Connect the fuel rack actuator to the Lister's fuel rack. It'll be the sole fuel control. No more futzing around with springs and adjusting it depending upon load to keep it close to 60 Hz.
The only other thing you'll need is a 12 (or 24) volt power supply for it. It'll draw about 4 (or 2 for the 24 volt) amps. You can adjust it for droop or isochonous. Droop operation is such that as speed drops, from say, 3600-3550 RPMs, fuel increases from 0 percent to 100 percent. Or you can set those numbers to your choosing. Remotely, you could roughly estimate genset load by looking at Hz. If you don't like Hz ever moving, you can set it as isochonous. Isochonous operation keeps 3600 RPMs, all the time, no matter what, as long as the engine can put out ample horsepower. If a load is applied, and the speed drops to 3595 RPMs for 2 seconds, the governor will pour on the fuel to 100% to reach 3605 RPMs for 2 seconds (or 3610 for 1 sec, or 3620 for .5 sec) to "catch up." When it responds to a new load and the engine RPMs start to come back up, it'll even actually start to pull the throttle back before the speed ever comes up to 60Hz, as the 1712 (or 1724, for 24 volt operation) is fairly intelligent. An isochonous governor will keep a an AC synchronous clock spot on, regardless of load from 0 to 100%.
With isochonous operation, you can not sense generator load remotely by looking at Hz, because average Hz won't move as load is added or removed. It may drop or spike when loads are added or removed but will average back to 60Hz (or whatever you chose to set it at) within a few seconds, or less. That's how the grid holds 60 Hz, no matter what the load.
For some reason, I find isochonous operation is amazing to watch (and hear) as load is added and removed. The Hz always reads 60, no matter what the load is. The flip side is that it's a balancing act with engine response time, interta, governor gain setting, and the like.
-Jerry