Power cut

Yerst, same thing happened to me the other day. Came in, dog shivering (old, hates the cold & nervous in the dark these days) and house in darkness. So I ran about to get the B&S 4kva set fired up. Whilst not REALLY ancient (it's got to be thirty years old I suppose) it is useful and interesting and has seen very little service.

Of course, the petrol is too old, the filter slow and the carb shi**y. So I fix all that in the rain in the garden and by the light of a petrol lantern in the workshop. Brrrm!

I find a lead, plug it in and nip indoors with the other end, running into a four way block. Plug in the TV and a table lamp and the kettle, make a coffee and look out into the street. Darkness. I'm the only one with lights!

Har, har - who's larfing now, O extractors of the urine, Vikings is one thing 'cos I appear on TV from time to time, that seems to be OK - minor celebrity an' all that. But old rusty iron, putt-putting engines in the garden, trailers with gert lumps in, the Volvo with its nose in the air again, with yet another engine in the back that Noah took out of service? Tsk-tsk, he's loosing it you know..............

Blmph............

As I gloat, so all the lights come on in my cul-de-sac.

Bugger.

In the back garden, the end of the silencer blows off the B&S, shattering the quiet darkness with its clamour.

Regards,

Kim Siddorn

- who wishes you and yours all the very best for the Festive season and a cheerful and prosperous New Year.

Did you watch "Blackout Britain" on tv a couple of weeks ago? It seems that privatisation has resulted in the closure of a large number of the smaller power stations and the country's generating capacity is now concentrated in a few very large plants. If one goes down there is a problem, if two go down there is a big problem. So perhaps we should all be looking for backup sets - sounds like agood excuse to me anyway ;-)

So perhaps we should all be looking for backup

That's why I bought the BSA originally about 13 years ago. It only makes 800 watts but it will run central heating, lights and TV. This house is on electric cooking until I can change it so that won't work unfortunately. The last house I had was in Wales and I could carry on almost self sufficient if the outside world cut me off. The only service I had problems with was water but a trip to the stream would solve that. Wales is not known for its lack of water. Oil fired heating, a wood burning stove, bottled gas cooker and the little BSA worked a treat. There are various warnings of power cuts over Christmas so I now have a few gallons of petrol ready should the genny be needed. After all, if the power cuts are wide spread, the garages cannot dispense fuel either. The heaviest load is likely to be Christmas morning when everyone is cooking the lunch or just when Only Fools and Horses ends and all the kettles go on. Therefore, in order to save the country, I shall forgo my cuppa and stick to the bottled drink. Purely out of a sense of national service you understand, hic.

Merry Christmas John

Not being desperately aux fait with electrical matters, I take it that one isolates the items using locally-generated power from the mains?

I did this automatically as it seemed sensible, but have I missed something or would I really be then trying to supply the National Grid?

Regards,

Kim Siddorn

- who wishes you and yours all the very best for the Festive season and a cheerful and prosperous New Year.

Yup, it's an offence these days not to have a proper change-over switch if you want to fed your own place, part of the supplier's terms & conditions.

You wouldn't feed the grid, there would be a big band as the out of phase supplies tried to compete, and your genny would lose...:-((

To feed the grid you would need to be in synch with the grid and at the same voltage level or just below. To bring a genny on line requires speed control to enable the frequencies and phases to match up, then the voltage control to bring the supplying set up to the point where it becomes a feeder and not a consumer.

It's also quite interesting bringing DC stuff on line as well, particularly of they are 3-wire supplies and compound-wound.

Peter

Kind regards,

Peter

Peter Forbes Prepair Ltd Luton, UK email: snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk home: snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk

"Prepair Ltd" wrote (snip):-

Simplest way for smallish plant is to use an asynchronous induction generator, basically an induction motor driven at slightly above its synchronous speed, which will automatically adjust itself to a constant small phase difference with the grid. This phase difference represents the exitation current which is actually drawn from the grid. You can actually run a three phase induction motor as a stand alone generator in this way, loading it with capacitors to allow it to supply its own exitation.

I believe provision may soon be made to allow export to the grid due to interest in small scale CHP (combined heat and power) plants

NHH

Any sources for these? SEPA are getting more and more keen on generator inputs for package sewage plants and private pump stations, which I install.

In article , Niall writes

Any suitably rated 3 position break-before-make changeover switch can be used (16th edition regulation 551-06-01 (iii))

You can find suitable switches in the RS catalogue.

You'll need a 63A or 100A two-pole two-way change-over as John has mentioned above, Klockner-Moeller do one but I couldn't see it in the RS Catalogue, but it is on their own CD, biggest in 2-pole is 63A BTW:

2-pole 63A T5B-2-8211-EA/SVB 3-pole 63A T5B-3-8212-EA/SVB 3-pole 100A T5-3-8212-EA/SVB

All of these are with a central off position which I prefer for this sort of application as it allows you to have both sources disconnected from the load but still live. You'd need to break into the connection betwixt meter and sistribution board which is not to be recommended.

The other option which does not involve such a complex and expensive business is to provide a low-power circuit from the generator which is independent of the house mains supply, and into which a variety of appliances can be plugged, such as central heating pump and controller, three or four lights etc. Enough to maintain a reasonable amount of comfort :-))

Peter

-- Peter & Rita Forbes snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk Engine pages for preservation info:

In message , Peter A Forbes writes

Our house is wired with several circuits. Downstairs main house power ring, upstairs main house power ring, main house lights, cooker spur, on the one consumer unit, and extension upstairs power ring, extension downstairs power ring, extension lights and utility room power ring on another consumer unit. The way I did it was to route all the power except the utility room through the one consumer unit and then all the lights and utility room power through the other unit. The utility room power feeds central heating circulating pump, central heating burner pump and blower and deep freeze. There's a Klockner-Moeller change-over switch with central 'off' (about 10A as I recall) between the meter and the second consumer unit, and an external connector high on the wall near the back door.

In the event of a protracted power outage, I drag out the genny (a Briggs and Stratton 5-horse directly coupled to a 2.2KVA Italian alternator), connect to my external socket, change the switch over and we're away! I fully intend to build an engine house to house the Start-o-Matic set one day. Then I can plumb in a proper fuel supply (day tank fed from the central heating tank) and we can have heat, light and frozen food for a good while. The only sacrifice to be made is not to have roast dinners - our oven's electric and 2.2KVA just won't do it. The hob is propane, though, and runs 25 months on a big bottle. That should see us through everything except nuclear winter...

Regards

Pete

I'm now driving a recently acquired 740 estate with 1/4 million on the clock. Stuck ton of oak in it last week to drive (slowly) across town. Was rather pleased to find I've got the magic self-levelling back shocks and soon after setting off whilst what I thought was _grossly_ overloaded, it had levelled up rather nicely. Anyone else have a magic carpet Volvo ?

Had to go and crane a 220kg blacksmith's swage block out of the back of a friend's 850 the other week. He'd put it in with a stacker truck, but needed my engine crane to extract and install it in the shed.

-- Klein bottle for rent. Apply within.