Northstar Generators---- Beware!!!

[ultrarunner]

if I didn't have a farm.. I'd likely only have a 6.5kw genny.. but with the farm, the extra KW is nice.

soundguy

Your right... generally lots of motor loads on a farm to take into account.

 

[Dargo]

After using smaller generators for years I finally got tired of them after Hurricane Ike. No power for 8-1/2 days. I looked around and finally settled on an INDUSTRIAL diesel 16 KW Isuzu. It will run my well, air conditioner, lights, TV and water heater. I do have to juggle a little as it won't run all at the same time but it's not inconvenient. Really nice to have a/c and water during the summer. Keep a 400 gallon tank of fuel full with biocide and Pri-D. Got fuel for the genny, tractor, pickup and motorhome. Now if the trees don't do me in life is good.

After 10 years of debating, I finally bought me a larger diesel generator as well. The trouble was that all the units I was finding were powered by Chinese knock off diesel engines and no-name gen heads. I bought a 55 KW Yanmar unit with all Deep Sea electronics and auto transfer. It took two electricians to prove to me that buying a 20 to 25 KW (very minimum size for my application) would not save me any fuel over the much larger unit. Unless I'm drawing over what the smaller size could put out, my larger generator actually burns the same amount of fuel since it's working at such less capacity and I have the ability to run absolutely everything as normal.

After having a couple of ice storms and a tornado that left us without power for weeks I'd pretty well had it with a tiny 8.5 KW Honda that only let me run lights, fridges and a furnace. With a family member having unexpected health issues recently, I cannot have my home without A/C during our typical upper 90 degree days with high humidity. According to the electricians, the power from my generator is cleaner than from my utility company, so no worries about electronics. I've toyed around with the settings and now have it set to "exercise" for 1/2 an hour a month and wait 5 minutes without power before coming online. We get lots of short outages and I see no need for it to kick on for them. If the power is out for over 5 minutes, it's generally gonna be out for a while.

After looking and shopping for so many years, I ended up knowing more about generators than many of the online sellers. I mention that because you need to be cautious of some claims made by come companies about their generators. I can't decide if I want to sell my "old" (only about 5 or 6 years old) little Honda generator or not. It's a great little generator and portable. Otherwise, I'm very satisfied now (after 10+ years of debating how to go) with a reasonable sized diesel generator. I'm in the New Madrid fault zone and if we had a bad quake, a natural gas generator would be worthless since gas lines would likely be out for months. I have 6 months of food, about a million gallons of water and at least a months worth of power (before having to refuel) ready.

Oh, I forgot, the "larger" Northstar generators did NOT have engines that I'd be comfortable trusting. Not all Chinese stuff is bad. That is a proven fact. HOWEVER, if price is the main factor, the Chinese sure can build some junk knock-off stuff.

 

[EE_Bota]

Why fool around with Northern junk?

'Cause my Northern junk is a kubota diesel powered generator.
And it is 4wd.

 

[ultrarunner]

Every Natural Gas Genset I've come across can also use Propane and vice-versa...

Most of the Hospitals go with Diesel because the likelihood of being able to refill during a long term outage is greatest with Diesel...

The Natural Gas Units sure do burn clean and never have to worry about stale fuel problems...

 

[Dargo]

Every Natural Gas Genset I've come across can also use Propane and vice-versa...

Most of the Hospitals go with Diesel because the likelihood of being able to refill during a long term outage is greatest with Diesel...

The Natural Gas Units sure do burn clean and never have to worry about stale fuel problems...

Unfortunately for me, I discovered that I needed a meter about the size of a VW and a 2" dedicated gas line for the size generator I bought. Take those obsticles and add in the amount of NG it would take to run my generator and, for me, the answer became clear.

 

[jonyyuma]

Natural gas would be nice, but it is pricy and the gen-set must be de-rated from the gasoline listing. Plus, as you said, my gas pipe is two inch from the road, then one inch for 100 feet into meter.

 

[LoveTheSmellofDiesel]

Freezers stay cold a long time, particularly if you throw a blanket or 2 over them. Even without the blanket, my chest freezer stays frozen 24 hours or more. I run my Kubota 9kw diesel generator about 4 hours in the evening, and then again in the morning if I am trying to conserve fuel, but at less than .4 gal/hour and 50 gallons in a drum, I really don't need to worry about prolonged outages. Here is a link to info on the unit:

Kubota 9,875 Watt Diesel Generator

Remote start from the house and a manual transfer switch is all the convenience I need.

Why fool around with Northern junk?

Nice unit... Did you purchase from Central Maine Diesel? I'm suddenly in the market to budget in a genset as we've been without power for >24 hours and the community has almost turned into a WROL situation. 850k people without power with the windstorm that blew threw Northern IL yesterday morning.

 

[crazyal]

Nice unit... Did you purchase from Central Maine Diesel? I'm suddenly in the market to budget in a genset as we've been without power for >24 hours and the community has almost turned into a WROL situation. 850k people without power with the windstorm that blew threw Northern IL yesterday morning.

I've looked at them on line but haven't gone there to see them. I'm thinking that they buy a Kubota (or other brand) engine and then mate it to a generator. Not that it's bad but I would like to know more about what brand generator they use (I have no worries about the engines they use). If you do look into them further then please post what you find out.

 

[LoveTheSmellofDiesel]

I've looked at them on line but haven't gone there to see them. I'm thinking that they buy a Kubota (or other brand) engine and then mate it to a generator. Not that it's bad but I would like to know more about what brand generator they use (I have no worries about the engines they use). If you do look into them further then please post what you find out.

Will do, also looking at a Detroit Diesel / Delco combo - looks to be economical and used in a lot of commercial configs - the 20kw price points are lower... Seeing that we will be out another 3 days without power, this has moved up the priority list for future preparedness.

http://www.emerson2-71gm.com/Gensets.html - anyone have any thoughts?

 

[RPW]

Haven't followed the thread real carful but on that emerson you do know that it's a 3ph unit and all home and most smaller farms are single phase. You can do it but will require abit of finagling to split out your load to the three phases or a phase converter.