Full Power Switch [RE-wrenches]

[Bob Ellison]

Travis,
I just had to take a 3.5 hour ride (1 way) to adjust a 4024 Trace that was
fed by a 6000 watt diesel generator. It would either start charging and quit
or not pick it up at all.
After I got there my thoughts were confirmed, the voltage was out of spec.
The gentleman is in his 80's and had no phone on site, so there was no way
to explain it to him.
GET THIS ---- It started at 141 volts, I checked the speed and it was
turning at 3600 RPM so I raised the upper limit to 143 volts, it transferred
and started charging fine. There are no external meters on the system so I
was bouncing around a bit to try to keep track. Suddenly it stopped after 10
min or so. I restarted the generator and it picked up as it normally would,
It turned out that the voltage was dropping to 103 volts and the inverter
was hitting the low cut off also. Once I lowered that it was fine.

The generator was from WW Granger Co. He had just blown and changed a
capacitor. The replacement cost was around $250.00!
I would not touch one of those generators with a 10' pole.

Later,
Bob Ellison

-----Original Message-----
From:	Travis Creswell [mailto:ozsolar at ipa.net]
Sent:	Monday, May 01, 2000 7:07 PM
To:	RE-wrenches at topica.com
Subject:	Re: Full Power Switch [RE-wrenches]

Steve & Roy,

Thanks for all your input.  Yes, the generators that I mentioned are
brushless.  Just how bad is that besides being a throw away gen. head?  They
are priced at $1425 for 4500 Watt and $1710 for the 6600 watt (that is the
cont. rating not surge). That puts them under Steve's $2500 rule of thumb. I
have used several similar to them and they seem to do OK.  They do convert
to propane pretty easily and run very good.  The kohlers that I've used beat
them hands down but they are about 4 time more of course.  If you really
load them down the voltage does drop off.

Regarding unbalancing, what I most frequently see when I hook only one leg
up a low $ generator to one inverter/charger is the voltage quickly drops
off (under 110) from the parameter that the inverter will accept.  Then the
inverter disconnects itself from the generator.  Then the generator voltage
quickly gets too high for the inverter to accept.  After a while it settles
down and the whole cycles starts again.  The best solution I've found is to
hook up a relatively large load, something like 500 watt quartz works
great,to the unloaded 120 volt side of the generator.  It kind of quirky
telling a customer that he has to turn a light on to charge his batteries.
I usually seem  to do dual inverter system which solves so many head aches.

What about these small (4000 - 6000) diesel generators that I am seeing
around?  Does anyone know if they are 1800 RPM or 3600 RPM.  I have fiddled
with several older single cylinder diesels.  These new one look just like
the gas ones.

Travis Creswell



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