washers and generators

[hosspuller]

Sounds like it would be less expensive to buy an "old fashioned" top loading washer without any electronic display or controls. My 12 year old sears washer will run on any generator delivering enough voltage to start the 1/3 hp motor. It has a stepping switch driven by a clock motor to control the wash cycles.

I also have an old fashioned solar/wind driven laundry dryer. It is also pocket portable if I roll it up. It's called a rope. :thumbsup:

 

[arrow]

There are a shocking number of appliances that don't work on generator power. Your washer, the Splendide washer/drier in my boat and in most large RVs (go figure why an appliance designed to work in an environment typically powered by a generator don't work), a stove that I had to get rid of, my Buderus high-tech, high efficiency boiler, and I'm sure lots more.

The hilarious thing is that all the appliances I've encountered that don't work on gen power work fine off an inverter. I'd expect just the opposite. I just don't understand an electronics designer who creates a circuit that depends on any form of perfection from line power. WTF? And most of these appliances like boilers and stoves are EXACTLY the appliances that we buy generators to keep running when the power goes out. WTF?

I was just looking at the Buderus as a boiler replacement. It seems anything with a digital read out is suspect to give this type of electrical delivery failing marks. Glad you mentioned it.

 

[arrow]

You apparently have water and soap. What's wrong with a tub of water and some elbow grease? Gonna soften your cuticle? Gonna have to forget the Fabreeze? Don't want to get caught washing your underwear? Or is it just too much work? Maybe you could go to Salvation Army on Friday. Its 5 for $5 day: You can get new stuff and 'donate' the old. Even better would be to donate the old, they will clean and disinfect it, and then you can buy it back the next day!

I don't have any cuticles left pal as my former profession erased them. Thanks for your help on the matter. You're just what this forum needs.

 

[hayden]

Interesting. I'm a EE too, but never worked in this part of the business.

All the generators I've had issues with have been 1800 RPM. One was an Onan BGE 4000W Emerald which I think was a pretty good unit. Currently I'm running a 14KW Kubota commercial genset which is very heavy duty, and by boat's genset is a Cummins/Onan 11KW. All are 1800 RPM, tightly regulated, quality machines. Yet the appliances still have issues. I'm probably going to end up buying a scope to get to the bottom of it. I'm so tired of vendors pointing fingers at each other and none making it their jobs to design appliances that work under reasonable circumstances.

In all the cases I've dealt with, the control circuits have become confused in one way or another. On the Buderus boiler, the flame detector never sees the burner light (even though it does) and shuts down. On the stove, the piezo ignitors would not spark. The clock worked fine and all the temp controls worked fine, but the lighters wouldn't spark. And on the washer the water level sensor thinks the tub is both full and empty at the same time and errors out. In all other respects it works fine.

I really want to get a scope on one of these things to see what the wave form really looks like. Everyone says how noisy they are, but I wonder how many people have actually looked at it.

 

[hayden]

I was just looking at the Buderus as a boiler replacement. It seems anything with a digital read out is suspect to give this type of electrical delivery failing marks. Glad you mentioned it.

Yup, if you want to run it off a generator (seems reasonable to me), don't buy a Buderus. I actually had to build a circuit that detects when the generator is running and shuts off the heat until the generator stops. Otherwise the Buderus shuts down and has to be manually restarted even after line poser is restored.

In another place we installed a Muchkin boiler. I specifically asked them if they could confirm it will run off a generator and they said yes. I haven't tried it yet, but hopefully they know what they are talking about.

I went back and forth with Buderus on the generator issue and after ruling out obvious things like bad grounding etc. they went totally silent on me.

 

[ultrarunner]

At the hospital, sensitive electronic equipment on the Emergency Generator Circuit are all UPS protected... for line conditioning and to bridge the typical 6 second gap from power failure to generator supplied power.

Some of the sine wave units are as simple as this:

http://www.minutemanups.com/products/pdf/smartsine_data_sheet.pdf

 

[Will_C]

I don't have any knowledge to offer, but a question. I have a Honda generator, which is an inverter type. Would that be safe to use on sensitive appliances?

Will

 

[ayelvington]

At the hospital, sensitive electronic equipment on the Emergency Generator Circuit are all UPS protected... for line conditioning and to bridge the typical 6 second gap from power failure to generator supplied power.

Some of the sine wave units are as simple as this:

http://www.minutemanups.com/products/pdf/smartsine_data_sheet.pdf

I'm familiar with running a UPS from a generator, and most UPSs hate the power line distortion of a high-speed generator. Maybe a APC Symetra with some parameters changed, but not so sure...

 

[hayden]

On the Buderus boiler, I tried using a UPS between the genset and boiler, and I tried a line conditioner. None made any difference.

One issue with UPS, which has been mentioned already in teh context of inverters, is that most simple pass the line AC through to the loads when AC is present, and only provide inverter power when the AC fails. They can switch over fast enough to not impact the loads. This means that the same crappy generator output runs right through them to the loads.

But I say crappy generator output when I really think the fault is in the electronics of the appliances and is sloppy, lazy design work on their part. AC power is messy. Always has been, and always will be. I think appliances need to deal with it.

 

[ayelvington]

AC power is messy. Always has been, and always will be. I think appliances need to deal with it.

I did power quality analysis as part of my work in the military. Commercial power in most all communities is VERY clean and absent of distortion and harmonics.

Many UPSs use what is called double conversion power processing. They lower the battery to charge the battery, and then invert it to supply AC power. APC has commercial UPSs that are single-conversion UPSs. They run the line power through a synchrounous inverter that conditions the power and cleans it up. Power dips and drops draw power from the batteries providing absolutely continuous power to the load. I don't know if they are still around, but the APC Silcon series 125 kW/440V/3-phase totally rocked!

This is overkill for a wash machine, but anyone interested is high reliability power to essential loads needs to get away from the little boxes under their desks and start looking at these enterprise scale solutions. :thumbsup: