What is "dirty electric"?

[MossflowerWoods]

Joshua, good explanation, and I liked you O' scope screen shots.

James K0UA

Yes! I agree, he upped his NQ or "Nerd Quotient" significantly...

Plus it was a great explanation.

David

 

[John White]

Good Post. Got a couple more questions. My 2 big generator (Miller welder and home gen.) When you look at the recpticle, I think the right spade (narrow one) is the hot wire, left one (wide) is the netural, and bottom (round) is the ground. If you connect a volt meter to the hot and netural, you get 120 v. or to ground the same. But I have a couple of small Harbor freight gens. (to pick up and throw in my truck when needing power to run a drill or saw on the job) When you connect your volt meter to the hot spade and ground, you only get 60 volt, and connect meter between netural and ground and you get 60 volts, but when you connect netural and hot together then you get 120. I s this still a 60 cycle sine wave? Some one said these generators should not be used to power any electronic equipement and even damage some drills with any type of circuit board in them. There are millions of these gens. out there and most people never heard it. What is the scoop on this? Also I was told once that when running my gen. monthly to check it out that it should haver a small load applied to it. Dont just run it with no load it. Is this right? And I heard under no circumstances should a gen of this type be hooked in to feed any circuits in your main braker box.

 

[BobRip]

Whenever I test run my generator I plug two electric heaters into it. This does several things:

1. Heats up the windings and helps dry them out.

2. Verifies that they actually work. I want actual electricity not just a rotating generator.

3. Test the connections to see if they will handle current.

4. Excites the field which can sometimes loose their residual field.

5. Loads the engine and pulls gas through the carb. I also turn off the fuel and let the carb run dry at the end of the 20 minute run.

 

[BobRip]

To measure current draw from the generator I use a clamp on ampmeter. I remove the outer jacket, wrap tape over the green an white wire to tie them together and add insulation. Then the red wire is wrapped separately from the black wire. You clamp around the red wire to measure current in one leg and the black for the other leg. You can clamp on the white/green pair to measure the difference between the two legs. I actually made a short extension cord to do this shown here.

 

[joshuabardwell]

To measure current draw from the generator I use a clamp on ampmeter. I remove the outer jacket, wrap tape over the green an white wire to tie them together and add insulation. Then the red wire is wrapped separately from the black wire. You clamp around the red wire to measure current in one leg and the black for the other leg. You can clamp on the white/green pair to measure the difference between the two legs. I actually made a short extension cord to do this shown here.

That is mighty clever. I don't have one of those non-contact ammeters, so I can't do that.

 

[BobRip]

You can get them for as little as $20. Mostly I just look at what is running and add up the watts. However I will probably start measuring since I built these cables.

 

[aczlan]

Riiiight. Duh. People outside the US have electricity too, huh? How about that.

I was referring to your "I suppose it wouldn't be out of the question to have a single-leg 240 circuit, with a single 240-volt breaker, but I don't know of anywhere that's actually done. Is there such a place?" question.
Here in the US we run multiple 120v "hot" legs (2 for single phase, 3 for three phase) and it is uncommon to have any US market equipment that runs on more than 120 volts/leg. As such, you wouldn't see a "single leg 240v breaker" as that tripping would leave a live 120v leg.
Elsewhere (such as Europe), they run 240 volts/leg and you would see a "single leg 240v breaker" but you will not see that here in the US.

Aaron Z

 

[joshuabardwell]

I was referring to your "I suppose it wouldn't be out of the question to have a single-leg 240 circuit, with a single 240-volt breaker, but I don't know of anywhere that's actually done. Is there such a place?" question.

Yeah. I got it.

 

[John White]

Well after reading the information on this post. I went down to my shop and did some more checking on my gen. I might be in for some serious expense or retrofitting. I just purchased one of these little light plants that you see construction workers use at night along the highway. It is a 6000watt continous run, with a Leroy Soner gen head and a Kubota 850 engine. I went and did a voltage check again yesterday and found I am getting 130 volts. About 125 with a 100watt bulb and when plugging 2 1500 box heaters it drops to about 105. The engine does not pick up any speed. I am wondering if they even put a governor on this type of engine, since it is set up to run lights only and set the speed and forget it because nothing else is kicking on like at a house. I ordered one of those frequency meter off e-bay which should be here by the week end. I am going to try and stop by and ask a Kubota dealer and see what he says, and if I get time I am going to stop by a Sun Belt rental place as they have several light plants and see how they are set up. I am beginning to get a bad feeling.

 

[BobRip]

Well after reading the information on this post. I went down to my shop and did some more checking on my gen. I might be in for some serious expense or retrofitting. I just purchased one of these little light plants that you see construction workers use at night along the highway. It is a 6000watt continous run, with a Leroy Soner gen head and a Kubota 850 engine. I went and did a voltage check again yesterday and found I am getting 130 volts. About 125 with a 100watt bulb and when plugging 2 1500 box heaters it drops to about 105. The engine does not pick up any speed. I am wondering if they even put a governor on this type of engine, since it is set up to run lights only and set the speed and forget it because nothing else is kicking on like at a house. I ordered one of those frequency meter off e-bay which should be here by the week end. I am going to try and stop by and ask a Kubota dealer and see what he says, and if I get time I am going to stop by a Sun Belt rental place as they have several light plants and see how they are set up. I am beginning to get a bad feeling.

The engine will not increase speed when loaded, but it's torque output will increase. The frequency meter is a good idea.