Pardon my ignorance but I didn't know that was possible. I thought all the UK was wired. Very rural areas of the US, such as the western South Dakota ranch my dad grew up on, didn't get the grid until the 1950's.
Good advice. Thanks.
-- Mark
That's easy. One (1) 15w compact fluorescent. ;-)
-- Mark
One of the lurkers on this NG (name escapes me PLEASE chime in here) did some nice work on small generator fuel consumption about a year back. My bookmark file for that period got clobbered, no info.
IIRC the fuel consumption vs power output was highly dependent on exactly which engine you had. Some of the cheaper engines were really terrible on fuel. The curve started with about 25% to 40% of max consumption at zero load (engine losses keeping the engine running at
3600 rpm) At half load fuel consumption floated arond 60% to 70% of load, and max consumption at max load. There is a "sweet spot" that others mentioned around 50% to 75% of max load.The quality of the generator section also varies all over the map. I doubt if many of the cheaper units would take an extended run at max rated load: ie put five 1000 watt heaters on a 5kw (continuous rating ) generator and run it for 10 hours straight. The continuous rating is a function of the wire size in the generator, the peak starting load is a function of both the wire size (internal resistance) and the engine size (peak available HP)
There may (or may not) be a voltage regulator on your unit but any sudden loads will slow the engine, cause the frequency to droop badly. You may be looking at 50HZ for a second or two when a motor starts up. Doesn't both lights, may cause major impacts to your computer power supplies or cheap UPS unit.
What others said about watch> I'm asking here because I have seen other discussions about generators. >
I have a 50KW cummins turbo diesel and the manual says to occasionally run at max output. Doesn't say why but it says it will greatly lengthen life of unit. Engine or generator? Dixon
Both: The engine will benefit from a full heat-up and the hotter exhaust. It'll help keep the exhaust system cleaner, help remove deposits on the injectors, "full-stroke" the injectors (if you have unit injectors) for more even wear, and generally just "work out the kinks".
The genny (if it has brushes/slip rings) will arc-clean the rings and brushes. Even if it doesn't have them, full-load use will heat up the assembly, driving out moisture. Running a slip-ring set on very low loads is actually detrimental to the rings and brushes.
It's standard maintenance procedure: We had dummy loads for our 250KW units at the department of health in SC, where it really wasn't reasonable to run the structure off the generator during monthly tests.
LLoyd
Ewwwww. I hate that back gumbo. Isn't that the stuff they make diapers for? :)
A fridge can go at least a day without power, if you keep the door shut. More in the freezer section really helps, even if its bottles of water turned to ice. Thermal mass. Freezers can usually go at least 2 days or more, if they are decently made and are top loading.
You can simply unplug the fridge during higher use times (of other equipment, then plug in the fridge when you are coasting.
Very common tactic in the survivalist community, or when two homes are sharing a genset during a power outage.
Gunner
"Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for Western civilization as it commits suicide"
- James Burnham
In cold weather, close off all of the home, except for a connected room or two, bedrooms are good because they often have a common bathroom, and either run a small space heater, or hook up your central heat to the genset..the blower motor. Central heat becomes an issue as the thermostat tends to be in a common area, which then becomes your living area., closing off the rest of the house.
If you are on a genny..unless you have enough power to do the entire house..remember its easier to heat a small box than a big one.
Centralize and expect to be a bit uncomfortable when going to the bathroom.
The ladies may bitch..so tell them if you can sell their car..you can get a much bigger generator the next time and they can be comfortable in the next power outage.
Tends to shut them up......
Gunner
"Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for Western civilization as it commits suicide"
- James Burnham
To give you some idea how the economics work out here we use our Lister Startamatic set thats air cooled SR2 cyl 6kw@230v proper sine wave AC output
1500rpm plant, from about 5pm to 10.30pm. this gives all the power we need for house lights, computers, water pump, we also have a 12V dc system throughout the house for a battery lighing system so when the gen is off we can stil seewhat we want to do and run my laptop and the adsl router. It also charges our lead acid battery bank that runs our inverter for the fridge freezer throughout the remaining time. this uses what we have here as tractor diesel fuel and todays price per ltr of 36uk pence( @ 4.5 ltrs per UK gallon) about 3ltrs with a load not exceeding 2kw@230v. so thats about$2.40 per day your money. It doesnt take into account the plant costs, maintenance etc. Now this set cost me $800 made in about 1980 , and was a standby plant with less than 200hrs on it. Virtually new. Weve had it 2 yrs. It weighs about a ton, I had to collect it, install it wire it in etc. This week I had a fuel delivery of 500 UK galls of this diesel fuel. cost $1800.This is used in our generators and farm tractors. For our road vehicles we all use gasoline tho I used a diesel peugeot 305 for 20 yrs. did 250,00 miles and the bodywork was too much effort to repair. I used it as a truck so it wasnt its fault. I had a 305 GTX estate given me for free also 20 yrs old and thats running fine. Its 2ltr and allmost too fast for me. Getting back to generators, weve several of course, with the biggest being a 20kva set @230v. Also diesel from 1942. Ex WD and still in good shape. to get the mains connected I d have to find $30,000.00 . I can get a lot of fuel for that!!. Id rather put that into solar panels if I had it!!. hope this is of interest. Diesel fuel has climbed in cost dramatically over the past 5 yrs, so the next step is to build a wind turbine for battery charging. I was lucky to find 3 tons of the Alcad nickel iron batteries some 2 yrs ago. Ex British rail signalling standby. Useable life span 40 yrs they change them every 10. So lots to do. were some 5 miles from out local village. Nearest small town is 10 miles away and any sizeable town is over 25 away. Nice to be independent of everything and everyone.Lloyd, were these dummy loads a carbon pile, heating elements or salt water?
b
"Cal-rod" elements in a pretty large freshwater tank. We could only run the thing about an hour before the water got too hot for our comfort -- and were instructed not to boil the tank dry (Duh!).
They were basically the same sort of element in a common electric water heater, but bigger. Contactors would allow us to bring the (IIRC) twenty element online incrementally. If they were 20, then they should have been about 12KW elements. That's not all that big for a Cal-Rod. I think the bottom element in my water heater is 4500W.
....Thinking back, now.... I think I also recall this genset put out 440V three-phase, so the 20 element memory is probably wrong. Maybe it was just
20 stages with 12KW worth of load per stage.Hmmm... Wouldn't that be about 4KW per element, or am I doing the three-phase thoughts wrong? That's not so large, after all.
LLoyd
LLoyd
I recall seeing a salt-water tank in a huge Onan distributor and it was used as a dummy load. No fishing allowed.
Very! Thanks for writing.
Well done.
-- Mark
On Fri, 16 Feb 2007 20:29:24 GMT, with neither quill nor qualm, "buffalo" quickly quoth:
That's a shocking message.
------------------------------------------- Jack Kevorkian for Congressional physician! ===========================================
According to Bruce L. Bergman :
[ ... ]
There used to be a company called "Best", which made an excellent line of UPS's. The power coming in both charged the batteries and powered a built-in ferroresonant transformer. When the power failed, the UPS would take over driving the ferroresonant transformer without any noticeable loss of power, so the computers remained happy.
These were designed specifically for powering computers. And, they would (if asked nicely via the serial port) ASCII plot the waveform of the input power, as well as printing quite a few staticstics about it, including frequency.
I've got a couple of these here protecting my computers. Note that because of the ferroresonant transformer, the efficiency is not as good as some units are -- especially when operating from line power.
It also regularly switches over to running from battery power for about a minute every so often (I forget the actual interval) to check how good the batteries are, and to issue a warning when the batteries should be replaced -- hopefully *before* the long power outage hits. :-)
Enjoy, DoN.
The "Ferrups"
Definitely NOT efficient, they tended to run pretty warm. The same company (out of Neceda? Wisconsin) built what was called the "UBS", or Unlimitted Battery System. It was a gasoline, deisel, or propane/natural gas powered DC generator with auto-start connected to a Best UPS. I think they started with the Ferrups, and then went to a standard dual conversion unit.
The Fortress unit went into test mode every day or so - can't remember exactly anymore.Could find my manual somewhere, I guess.
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