Bought a used PTO genset 3 years ago, tested when I bought it, but never used it after that.
One of my friend is building a new house, and Hydro power keep beign delayed. His plaster guy will be there on Monday, so he asked me if he could borrow my pto genset so he can heat and power the house for the next 10 days or so. ( he is unsure when he will have power, but the wood stove should be install this upcoming friday).
I told him it would be my pleasure to loan him the genset if he is silly enough to put fuel in his tractor.
Went there on Friday to help him seting up the genset.
Got there at 9:00 am, then we unload the genset frim my truck and connected it to his tractor ( A massey 1648).
By the time the genset was installed ( he did not had a draw bar, so we had to be creative) and the wiring was done, it was 11:00 am. Got the tractor running and slowly added load ( electric basebord through out the house) to the genset untill we hit 48 amp ( the backfeed breaker was 50 amp).
Inside the house was at -2 celsius at 11:00 am, it was -5 outside.
He topped off the tractor at 7:00 pm and fill it full, it took 40 liters.( tractor was full when we started). The house was then at 19 celsius.
So, rough math are 5,7 liters of fuel per hours producing 11.52 kw per hours. Which is 2.1 kwh per 1 liter of fuel.
At the actual price of 2.40$/liter, it comes down to 1.14$CAD per kwh….. OUCHHHH !! ( here we pay 0,08$ when connected to Hydro Quebec)
So it was fun to play / test the pto genset while helping and friend and getting some real world data, without paying for the fuel.
The genset ran great, had to play with winding boost once under load (48amp per leg) and I was able to stabilized it at 115v per leg at 60Hz.
I monitored the temperature on the genset with a cheapo IR gun and the hottest spot was the high speed bearing of the gearbox, at approx 51 celsius after 2 hour of operations .
So my friend will keep using it at least till this coming Friday ( and spend a fortune in diesel) and switch to wood for heat untill he finally get connected to the grid.
Just tought I’d share with you guys.