Power Conditioning Options While on Portable Generator

[LouNY]

for that price point you get into a nice inverter. and unless you keep it near the panel, its as much work as a generator.

The one I looked at was designed to be hard wired into the house system and automatically takes over on utility failure the size of the unit and the amount of battery determines how long it can run before needing a generator to continue.
The generator can either be one of theirs automatically controlled or any other generator deployed as desired.

 

[CalG]

Do Inverter generators suffer from "line length" issue the way inverter based Variable frequency drives (VFD) do?

It would seem that any Inverter based generator power system would benefit by the inclusion of inductors or isolation transformers.

 

[3930dave]

Its nearly impossible to clean up the power from a portable generator. Instead of wasting money on trying to clean that unit up, get a good quality whole house unit thats large enough not to bog down under load. My 22 kw powers entire house without noticeable bogging down (after installing soft starter on ac unit). Has not hurt any device in house under many long power outages. I have a siemens fs140 on main panel also, but as started thats for surges. My computers and routers are under ups protection, but nothing else is. Have never had any issues.

Ive had many customers burn out well pumps under portable generator use, but never under whole house use. I service over 300 generator customers.

g - starting into this thread, I was thinking of those soft-start modules you use for big household loads.....

Lousy memory (me), pls remind us what brand you like.

Rgds, D.

 

[DarkBlack]

Do Inverter generators suffer from "line length" issue the way inverter based Variable frequency drives (VFD) do?

Shouldn’t. VFD’s use PWM on the constructed waveform to control desired current in the motor, so those square wave pulses are effected by cable distance.
An inverter generator attempts to not effect resulting current, by providing as close to a simple 60hz sine wave as possible, which shouldn’t be effected by moderate cable lengths

 

[ponytug]

we were looking for a power conditioner to hopefully smooth out the power we're getting from our generator. Our generator plugs into a breakout panel on the side of the house to divert power through part of the house but all the conditioners I'm finding are normal household plug based rather than the 4 pronged generator plug. I'm hoping to make things not only safer for our electronics but also eliminate the flicker we get from some lights.

Upfront, I'm not a qualified electrician.

I guess that I start from the page that I know grid power isn't perfect, and generator power is even less perfect, so a imperfections are to be expected.

I have never seen a consumer oriented line conditioner for more 20A. If you really wanted to, you could probably have a qualified electrician wire a bunch of them into your various circuits, but I doubt it will help with the flickering. They would help with electronic noise and distortion.

If you have concerns about your electronics, I think that generally nothing beats a quality online pure sine wave UPS protecting the electronics. That puts your gear behind a battery charger, battery, and an inverter, which is a bunch of isolation and noise reduction. Many also have surge suppression built in. A high quality surge suppressor strip would be my second choice, and after that, I think it mostly falls into the "don't kid yourself" category. If you can find a sufficiently large ferroresonant autotransformer, those are great, but in my experience those are tough to find these days, and they tend to be very pricey.

Light flickering is usually a voltage drop as some load kicks in. That is mostly due to the generator design (wiring in the generator head, the control for the voltage regulation, and the control for the engine speed (load) regulation). If you have things like AC units and pumps, you can get soft starters that will help a lot. Otherwise, flickers are not generally all that fixable except for replacing the generator, but some generators may have better voltage regulators available. (For example, digital controls replacing analog controls, and electrical solenoids replacing mechanical governors.) However, you can try to reduce the resistance from the load to the generator head as higher wiring resistance will make the voltage drop worse. That is fixable with lower gauge wires, and shortening up the length of the wires, and making sure that all the plugs and contacts are clean.

Whether the work and investment is worth it to you is a different story.

All the best,

Peter

 

[grsthegreat]

g - starting into this thread, I was thinking of those soft-start modules you use for big household loads.....

Lousy memory (me), pls remind us what brand you like.

Rgds, D.

I use Hyper Engineering soft starters myself. Also, the Smoothstarter is a nice unit.

 

[newbury]

Light flickering is usually a voltage drop as some load kicks in.

Or the light bulb going, not screwed in, etc. Still a voltage drop, but not due to some load.

Just happened yesterday, wife was complaining she could not use the lights in the kitchen because the fan they are on was causing the light to strobe (fan has as part of the fixture 3 lights ). The bulb was dying.

 

[3930dave]

I use Hyper Engineering soft starters myself. Also, the Smoothstarter is a nice unit.

Thnx,

D.

 

[LittleBill21]

I have learned that cheap led's have the issue more then others. My 3d printers reak havoc on led bulbs due to their pwm constantly firing. I have found that phillips bulbs, have better filtering and work flawless, where other bulbs are a disco party.

link to the brand of bulb i use when i get flickering.

https://amzn.to/3zIow3P

 

[geteh]

Upfront, I'm not a qualified electrician.

I guess that I start from the page that I know grid power isn't perfect, and generator power is even less perfect, so a imperfections are to be expected.

I have never seen a consumer oriented line conditioner for more 20A. If you really wanted to, you could probably have a qualified electrician wire a bunch of them into your various circuits, but I doubt it will help with the flickering. They would help with electronic noise and distortion.

If you have concerns about your electronics, I think that generally nothing beats a quality online pure sine wave UPS protecting the electronics. That puts your gear behind a battery charger, battery, and an inverter, which is a bunch of isolation and noise reduction. Many also have surge suppression built in. A high quality surge suppressor strip would be my second choice, and after that, I think it mostly falls into the "don't kid yourself" category. If you can find a sufficiently large ferroresonant autotransformer, those are great, but in my experience those are tough to find these days, and they tend to be very pricey.

Light flickering is usually a voltage drop as some load kicks in. That is mostly due to the generator design (wiring in the generator head, the control for the voltage regulation, and the control for the engine speed (load) regulation). If you have things like AC units and pumps, you can get soft starters that will help a lot. Otherwise, flickers are not generally all that fixable except for replacing the generator, but some generators may have better voltage regulators available at mini dachshund. (For example, digital controls replacing analog controls, and electrical solenoids replacing mechanical governors.) However, you can try to reduce the resistance from the load to the generator head as higher wiring resistance will make the voltage drop worse. That is fixable with lower gauge wires, and shortening up the length of the wires, and making sure that all the plugs and contacts are clean.

Whether the work and investment is worth it to you is a different story.

All the best,

Peter

thank you so much for your suggestion