Making my own 20 KW Genset

[Smokeydog]

My wife is my best helper too.

Our backup generators had sheetmetal pans underneath to monitor and contain leaks. Oil and fuel soaked wood or rubber with engine heat a bad combo. Cookie pans better than nothing.

What’s your fire suppression plan? Mounted fire extinguishers? That much fuel is going to be hot. Block wall at gen shed between house would help. Realize insurance can think of many ways not to pay.

 

[Industrial Toys]

I need to find a lady friend that isn't afraid of heights, like the second step of a three step stool.

I was considering the dangers of a diesel soaked generator enclosure a short while back. Clean up as best as I could and am Considering some heat detectors and horns.

But mostly, making sure all circuits (low voltage, control and line voltage) have "proper" overload protection is important.

 

[sodamo]

Your talk of Katie reminds me of my wife. A few years back we were discussing one of my projects with friends, one of whom is a retired LA county electrician. Part of the conversation involved pulling wire, which our friend added his input. To which my wife my wife piped up and volunteered, ‘malury, I’ve pulled as much wire as you” and listed a few of her assists. A bit wide eyed, he replied, “No, I think you’ve pulled more.” We had recently pulled a 4 wire service about 350ft to our cottage. Much to my pleasure, she pulled the last 20ft under the slab while I guided at the pull box.

 

[BrokenTrack]

I kind of set the genset engine rebuild aside for a bit, when I decided to make the back-up generator, have a back-up, of the back-up.

By that I mean, it occurred to me that if I install a separate shaft beside the generator with a gear box, and run it outside; I can either:

1. Run the generator by my tractor and pto shaft
2. Run it by my separate engine

In this way, if the grid goes down, and my genset engine will not start, or vice versa and the tractor will not start, I can just shift the shafts from the engine to the pto shaft, or pto shaft back to the genset engine, and power my generator that way. Other than the cost of an additional pto shaft and frame, there is no reason not to do so. Double redundancy is always good, especially if the cost is only a few hundred dollars more.

I also hard wired it right in to my house. As of right now, I am running the generator through a welding plug which limits its capacity to only 50 amps, but with this new hard wired arrangement, it is now wired for 100 amps, so I can get full use of this generator. Then with the new control box, I can dial it in for voltage and hertz, and get really clean power out of this unit.

 

[groundcover]

You sure are getting an early start on that today !

 

[BrokenTrack]

You sure are getting an early start on that today !

Some days I cannot sleep. Today was one of them. I have been up since midnight, which is not all that uncommon for me.

 

[BrokenTrack]

I managed to make some real progress on this project on Saturday.

My orginal plan was to remove the gearbox and mount that separately to the PTO shaft, for tractor PTO operation, and then mount the stand alone engine directly to the generator. But when I removed the gearbox, the shaft was geared directly, so it really needed to stay attached. That left me with the issue of coupling the engine turning at 1200 rpm, to the input shaft of the gearbox that must turn at 540 rpm. I did some calculations, and it seems with my existing 7 inch sheave, I need a 16 inch sheave on the input shaft of the gearbox. That is easily doable, so then I just needed to mount the generator in the right place.

With my transmissionline run, and a new welder outlet in the generator shed, I could now weld what I needed to in place.

Using 1/4 inch luan plywood, I cut out what my 16 inch pulley would be, and then positioned the generator into position, and designed a generator mount that would mount to my engine frame, hold the generator properly for pto operation, provide clearance for the 16 inch pulley, but also be adjustable so it could tighten the belts for engine-driven operation. I made it so that it has 4 inches of lateral movement, and (2) adjustable bolts to slide the generator laterally.

 

[BrokenTrack]

Once the generator was mounted, I hooked up the generator leads to the load box, and grounded everything, and I mean everything:

Engine to frame by bonded loop
Frame to ground
Generator to ground
Load box to ground
Generator Control Box to ground

I also got longer pto shafting, measured carefully, and then drilled a hole through the wall so I can park my tractor outside and generate power by PTO.

I was glad when all this was done because my house had been without back up power for (2) days, and it was pretty windy. Now, at least I have back up power, and with my new Generator Load Box, it will be much better power now that I can set it to match grid-power quality.

Here is a picture of the generator with its new mounting frame, and all hardwired in to my home's main power.

 

[BrokenTrack]

As a side note, if someone is thinking about doing what I am doing, there are other options than just having a back-up, of the back-up power source. The weakness in my system is, the redundant back-up system is just in engine power (Pto or Engine). So in other words, I have no back up generator because each driven method is sharing the same generator.

Option 1: Is to buy a 40 kw generator to mound directly to the engine so that there are (2) generators.

Option 2: Fabricate a $6 synchronizer and have your tractor running the PTO generator with the engine running the second generator. Together that would produce 250 amps at 240 volts, for 60 KW total power.

In order for me to do this, I would have to buy a 40 kw, double bearing generator head for $2700 (including shipping), and replace my 100 amp breakers with 200 amp ones. So in other words, not a lot of cost for some extra amps and watts. You could do some serious work with 200 amps and 60 kilowatts.

 

[3930dave]

You could do some serious work with 200 amps and 60 kilowatts.

I might of missed it..... do you run a small smelter ?

Liking the options you are setting up !

Rgds, D.