Another successful power outage performance.....

[George A]

It's hot..........bloody hot up here in northern California, plus we have massive wildfires burning all around our little city. At 2:45 yesterday the power went kaput and took our evaporative cooler down with it. I called the power company and their estimate was 6:00 pm before restoration, and our house was beginning to get a "little" warm.

I rolled the Listeroid out of its storage hole in the garage, checked various fluids, oiled a couple of things, then cranked it over. It started on the first compression stroke and settled down to its normal working speed. I plugged in the cord, moved the cutout in the breaker box and everything came back to life.

I was later informed that there were 2400 households without power. The only places still operating were the local hospital, city hall..........and George .

When the wife got home at 4:00 pm, she walked into a nicely cooled house with the news on the the t.v. I plugged my Kilawatt into an outlet and got a reading of 105 volts, so I shut off the cooler and the voltage jumped up to 117. Hmmm.

A couple of things I noticed and will attend to: the generator body got hot to the touch after about an hour. This was a combination of the ambient air temperature (over 100 degrees) and very poor ventilation. I removed the entire rear shroud during the run and that let a LOT of heat out. I'll perforate that shroud with vent holes before I reinstall it. This generator is military surplus and only 2500 watts, enough to operate the refrigerator, lights and t.v. I also checked the tag on the cooler motor and that bugger pulls 7.4 amps on high speed! Combined with the t.v., fridge and the air temperature, no wonder it got hot! I'll start looking for a 5000 watt unit.

I also noticed that my intake tappet isn't rotating. I can give it a spin while running and it'll rotate perhaps a half turn, then stop so it looks like I'd better pull it and check the cam surface. Probably not finished all that well.

All in all, a successful 4.5 hour run with no major problems and a couple of minor flaws detected. I really LIKE my engine!

[George A]

Thanks for the input glort.........you know, you're right. All things considered, my 6/1 would probably be a lot more efficient with a 3000 watt generator. No sense paying more for using only about 3/5ths of its capacity anyway. I know the Chinese produce a 3000 watt unit, so I'll start poking around. Since I completely rebuilt the 2500 watt unit, I can always squirrel it away for another project.

Turbocharger?? No........GMC 6-71 blower man! I wonder if the resulting power would just be enough to run the blower drive with nothing left over for load? LOL.....I think I'll leave it "naturally aspirated" for longevity.

[BruceM]

2500 watt isn't a bad match for the 6/1; that's about all it can handle as a continuous load. As Glort suggested- a small fan to get cooler air to it might help if you are running near rated capacity. 

A bigger head will just have more head room for a motor start load or lousy power factor loads...up to a point. 
Most have reported no loss for turning ST 5KW heads; not much difference in unloaded fan and bearing drag and excitation overhead. A couple guys even run 7kW ST and at least one here has reported using the Harbor Freight 3600 rpm - 10KW.

[38ac]

George I always try to talk people into 5kw heads for 6/1 engines for the exact reasons you just experianced. With th e 5KW head tbe engine will labor before the head is over loaded and the operator can hear that and adjust his loads. A 6/1 is fully capable of burning up a 2.5 or 3 that doesn't have a good overload  factor or doesn't have prim and proper load  protection.  The lager head cost very little more up front and close to zero more to operate.

[BruceM]

My 6/1 is blowing black exhaust at 3kw...but I'm at 5600 feet so there is a loss of about 20-25% of power compared to sea level operations.  This just confirms what 38AC states- 5KW is the best size match for the 6/1, by many practical accounts.

I wish the Stamford clones that Dieselgman suggests went that small, as I am disappointed with quality and consistency of the ST heads being imported to the US.  They are contenders with Rajkot in QC. 

[ronmar]

I like to use the frequency function of the Killowatt to gauge engine load.  No load to full load my 6/1 droops about 4HZ in frequency.  I set the governor to deliver 62HZ no load and know I am about maxed-out when I see 58 HZ. I can plug the killowatt in whatever room I am in and have a good idea of engine load...

[mike90045]

I run a 6/1 into a 5Kw head. 

It's an honest 5Kw and can carry 3Kw loads with poor power factor that my modern 3Kw cannot carry at all.

[George A]

Wow.......lots of great advice as usual!

I set my Hz at 62 cps, no load. As usual, the Indian governor is a bit sluggish despite careful linkage modifications. It won't "pick up the load" instantly as you would hope for, but it DOES manage to keep the rpm's up to the best of its ability. More of a load results in Hz loss, down to about 58, worst case scenario but that's still enough for emergency purposes. This is where a larger (5kw) generator would help.

When I first built this unit, the intention was to simply power our propane gas furnace (electronics/fan), the fridge and a couple of lights in anticipation of outages during WINTER. I never considered an outage during the hot summer months, but with the fires in our area coupled with high winds it happened. The ringer in the whole scenario was the cooler. It was a recent purchase and larger than our old one, so the load increase on the generator was significant. Oh, it'll pull the load alright.....but it's just about at its limit to do so. Looking back, I was foolish to not even give the starting current a thought!

While everything was up and running, I decided to see if the microwave oven would work so I put a cup of water in and turned it on "high". The results were revealing.......the oven started normally but quickly bogged down, making the weirdest sound you could imagine. I quickly shut if off and decided the term "load sharing" meant something after all...

Something else.......we've replaced just about every light bulb in the house with LED's. There is NO "Lister flicker" with the better quality bulbs, but the bargain bulbs I just bought flicker like mad.......even worse than an incandescent. They look like a strobe light show from the sixties! I'll pull one of the good bulbs and make note of the manufacturer and replace the bargain jobs.

With the exception of the large cooler motor, everything seems to work as I originally planned but I'll still consider a larger generator head. The extra "cushion" would be nice. In the meantime I'm going to see if there's a way to mount a cooling fan on the existing one.

[38ac]

The other factor I neglected to mention is when you have them wired for 220 operation and feeding your house panel you can easily over load one winding due to unbalanced loads and maybe some of your heating issue and another reason to upsize the head.
 Others can better explain it than I but basically each 110V of your house panel is running on a separate winding in the head thus with a 5KW head you have 2.5 available on each leg which could be a far piece different than a 5kw total load limit depending on how it is balanced.

Like Ronmar I monitor my generator loading via Hertz, not voltage. We are running  a 1115 Changfa type driving a 15KW head with standard harmonic winding control and can pretty much live as we please when the power grid goes down but my wife watches the killowatt meters we have around the house (3)  and when she loads or unloads things to point that things need adjusted she goes out and bumps the throttle. Works for us.

[George A]

38c, your explanation is perfect. Yeah, I'm aware of the 110/220 volt load limits with generators, and this is a 110 volt ONLY generator. My setup basically ignores any 220, so only five 110 circuit breakers are engaged during operation. Those circuits are about 2/3's of the lighting and perhaps ten plugs in the kitchen and living room. Everything left over is not imperative during an outage in my opinion. It's a small setup, meant for emergency use only and I was aware of its limitations when I penciled it out.

If I go with a 5kw ST head, it's my understanding that they can be wired for full output on 110 only which would be more than satisfactory in my situation. Admittedly I couldn't use the FULL 5000 watts but it would still have quite a bit more wiggle room than my current generator.

[BruceM]

Interesting that so many use the imperfect mechanical governor and resulting rpm change as a practical means to monitor engine load level.  I do too!  Handy because I sometimes have an air compressor in the load mix.

[38ac]

Our big load changers are the central air, well pump and stove. Wife is pretty swift for a city girl,  she knows that when on stand by power she cant be running all three full blast, plus the rest of the house. So she uses it as an excuse to go to town to eat, cant shut off  that A/C or the well pump  dont ya know??

[George A]

Our big load changers are the central air, well pump and stove. Wife is pretty swift for a city girl,  she knows that when on stand by power she cant be running all three full blast, plus the rest of the house. So she uses it as an excuse to go to town to eat, cant shut off  that A/C or the well pump  dont ya know??

Yeah, I know...........except my wife has no such excuse. We have a gas stove.............heh, heh, heh. Kind of funny in a way too......she was raised on a local cattle ranch and anytime the power goes out, she's concerned about whether we can get water. I have to explain to her each time that we're on city water. No pump to worry about......