Your last generator Maintenance Run

[90cummins]

Those photos of a professional control panel certainly give me an example to follow. I feel an upgrade my be in my future.
I have solar city so I can’t hijack any power.
However the thought crossed my mind if things got crazy. I would need a charge controller rated at 600 volts to do that.
I wish I bought my system but at the time it wasn’t an expense I could afford
90cummins

 

[Patrick Herd]

Those photos of a professional control panel certainly give me an example to follow. I feel an upgrade my be in my future.
I have solar city so I can’t hijack any power.
However the thought crossed my mind if things got crazy. I would need a charge controller rated at 600 volts to do that.
I wish I bought my system but at the time it wasn’t an expense I could afford
90cummins

Victron's Multiplus 2 inverters have the ability to play ball with something like the solar city grid tied inverters: Meaning you can AC couple your battery system to the house and solar system.

 

[grsthegreat]

I quite like using finger trunking to keep the panels I build organised:

View attachment 752771
Above is a work in progress (one of the few non commercially sensitive photos I could find ) capping not yet installed on the trunking.


Would it be possible to duct some waste heat from the generator to the batteries in winter? They will definitely perform a lot better if operating at a human comfortable temperature.

Nice looking panel.

 

[Patrick Herd]

Nice looking panel.

Thanks, ruined by me installing it temporarily

 

[ultrarunner]

Got to love wiring in the UK, New Zealand, Europe, etc with household voltage of 220-240 volts.

The higher voltage means smaller wire size for the same US amperage at 120volt.

It was a joy to wire up the panels in Austria with the smaller Guage often stranded conductors.

I believe most of my circuits were either 8 amp or 12 amp.

Also a lot of 380v 3-phase in rural homes.

 

[3930dave]

I remember a UK audio-hobbyist commenting many years ago..... "Proper "earthing" is not just helpful to eliminate audio noise over here, but down right necessary for survival !".

Rgds, D.

 

[Patrick Herd]

Got to love wiring in the UK, New Zealand, Europe, etc with household voltage of 220-240 volts.

The higher voltage means smaller wire size for the same US amperage at 120volt.

It was a joy to wire up the panels in Austria with the smaller Guage often stranded conductors.

I believe most of my circuits were either 8 amp or 12 amp.

Also a lot of 380v 3-phase in rural homes.

Yep, I have 22kW available in a socket outlet just outside the kitchen: ~32A 400V. Even our hob is 400V, having 3 phase makes running machine tools at home a lot easier.

I remember a UK audio-hobbyist commenting many years ago..... "Proper "earthing" is not just helpful to eliminate audio noise over here, but down right necessary for survival !".

Rgds, D.

Guessing that's due to a combination of more sites where multiple houses share the same transformer, the multiple earthed neutral system, and the weird UK arrangement of doing 32A ring main circuits in houses...

More on the subject of generators:
Outage yesterday began at 8am, UPS carried my wife's WFH workstation until we sorted out transferring over to the backup inverter. Internet, computers, egg incubator, and lights all ran fine on the solar system for the duration.
2000W inverter shoebox which seems to spend most of it's life loaned to the neighbours: Refused to start, neighbours called me before I left for work so went to investigate... Issue between ears: Fuel tank breather tightly closed, coupled with ambiguous labelling of the combined fuel and ignition kill knob. Defeated me too for longer than I care to admit to

 

[3930dave]

2000W inverter shoebox which seems to spend most of it's life loaned to the neighbours: Refused to start, neighbours called me before I left for work so went to investigate... Issue between ears: Fuel tank breather tightly closed, coupled with ambiguous labelling of the combined fuel and ignition kill knob. Defeated me too for longer than I care to admit to

You are too generous with that 2kw Patrick - your neighbours are getting all the practice-time in with it !

We all get reminders like that..... I recall an article in 4Wheeler years back - one of the staffers (seasoned wrench) wrote about tearing into the Scout II he built-up, that his daughter drove to school, due to a driveability issue..... had the Timing Cover off the front of the engine, checking the chain - went into the house to grab a sandwich....... daughter (grew up in the garage) comes in to house, and drops the totally plugged air-filter on the counter......

Some days, the Bear gets You.....

Rgds, D.

 

[daugen]

ran the Westinghouse for a few minutes this afternoon, just a follow up test after the bad on off switch replaced.
Oil full. Propane on. Press button. 1001 Vroooom
all is well

because of almost no hours on this, going to wait one more year on oil change. Full syn oil isn't going to wear out.
I'm just changing it to get rid of any condensation. Was changed once at about ten hours, and now likely around 25.
couldn't get the display to show hours, I'm sure op error. 246 volts thank you, but how many hours?

 

[3930dave]

ran the Westinghouse for a few minutes this afternoon, just a follow up test after the bad on off switch replaced.
Oil full. Propane on. Press button. 1001 Vroooom
all is well

because of almost no hours on this, going to wait one more year on oil change. Full syn oil isn't going to wear out.
I'm just changing it to get rid of any condensation. Was changed once at about ten hours, and now likely around 25.
couldn't get the display to show hours, I'm sure op error. 246 volts thank you, but how many hours?

Good catch on the switch D..... not what you'd want to find out, start of a multi-day outage.......

I'm not a fan of non-intuitive instrumentation..... kinda defeats the point of a piece of equipment that sits a lot, then needs to be used NOW in an emergency....

I think I've posted this before...... Briggs is one that had hour meters listed on their site, for 3600 rpm units.... IRCC, they were non-contact, non-wired - I think they detected vibration. If your stock meter is a pain, you might consider a stand-alone one.

Rgds, D.