small diesel generator [RE-wrenches]

[Hugh Piggott]

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At 9:35 AM -0400 16/6/04, Tom Lane, Energy Conservation Services wrote:
>An AC diesel generator can only recharge the battery storage bank with a
>small charging current and, therefore, has to run a very long time.

At 7:44 PM -0700 16/6/04, Darryl Thayer wrote:
>I like the idea of generators that charge the
>batteries.

Speaking as one who has lived with batteries for the last 25 plus 
years, I don't find engine charging of batteries very rewarding. 
Fast charging of very discharged batteries in cold weather is 
particularly demoralising.  It seems like you burn a lot of fuel and 
the batteries give you no thanks at all.

I'd just as soon leave them to stew and run my loads direct off the 
engine if I can, and this means a small engine (title of thread) 
running on reasonable capacity factor and yes, doing a bit of battery 
charge on the side if possible.  I don't run an engine to power my 
electric clock but I don't like to see the battery going down and 
down for hours after a brief but expensive generator run.  I'd rather 
not cycle them like that nowadays I just try to avoid discharging 
them where possible.

The logic points to generating low power AC.  I don't believe that AC 
generators are so much worse than DC, especially if AC is what you 
want in the end. If you want to cycle your batteries, fine, but my 
batteries are usually pretty sulky when they get low enough for me to 
start a generator and the cycle efficiency is really poor.  If you 
want AC then I see no point in generating DC and then feeding it to 
the inverter.  I get more useful kWh per gallon by running direct off 
AC engine power with a small enough engine to match the loads.

-- 
Hugh
Scoraig Wind Electric
http://www.scoraigwind.co.uk/

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