This work assess the technical viability of the use of straight vegetable oils as fuel for a compression ignition engine applied to distributed electric generation. The use of neat soybean, sunflower, and tung oils, three vegetable oils with potential for application in southern Brazil, was assessed. For this purpose, an electronically controlled conversion kit that preheats the fuel to a proper temperature was developed and adapted to a single-cylinder, naturally aspired, mechanically injected and controlled, compression ignition engine. The engine performance in a steady-state dynamometric cell, in terms of power, torque, specific fuel consumption, and emissions, using vegetable oils, was measured and compared to the performance for neat diesel oil. The neat diesel oil resulted in the highest brake power and the neat tung oil resulted in the lowest, with the relative difference among all fuels varying between 5 % and 20 %. However, the first law efficiency was highest for some of the blends tested, reaching 38 %, and increased for lower speed. The NO x and CO emissions both increased as the engine speed decreased, revealing the lack of complete combustion especially in the higher speed regime.