Off-grid electricity generation creates a number of environmental, social and economic concerns for remote communities. This represents an opportunity for deployment of SOFC systems in remote areas for distributed power generation. In this paper, a simulation of a 1 kW diesel-fed SOFC system using an autothermal reformer is developed and studied using a sensitivity analysis. The influence of key design and operating variables on system performance, where system performance is characterized by the net system efficiency, gross stack efficiency and the final system exhaust temperature is examined. Selected paired variable sensitivities are also examined based on the ranking of individual sensitivities, where two variables at a time are adjusted simultaneously. Of the variables studied, it is observed that variability in the air utilization, fuel utilization and the steam to carbon ratio have the greatest impact on system performance. Overall, an insight is provided into the nature of operating variable interactions as well as those operating variables that require more rigorous process control. The work presented in this study is to be used as a tool by the SOFC Canada NSERC Strategic Network for the design and development of a demonstration small-scale diesel-fed SOFC system. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.