What does "Standby Power Rating" mean?

[Bill()C]

I'm reading over my state regulations and whenever I hear of "emergency power" and "standby power" I think of the same thing... interchangeable terms.

However it is unclear to me what standby power rating means.  Does this apply to a distributed, "always on", type generator?  What does Prime Power rating mean?

I have ideas, but don't want to muck up this question with my guessing.  Thanks...

Bill

[Doug]

Can't help you, only state up here is the confusion caused by a Tory goverment budget.....

Doug

[trigzy]

A generator rated for "Prime Power" (ie. the main source of power for a given load) is a 24/7 continuous use duty rating.
"Stand-by Power" is just that, and is often a 12, 24, or other hour "surge rating"

Stand-by/Emergency power are often the same things, however there are some varying definitions depending on the application.  (Ie. a standby generator may actually come on when grid power is still on to meet excess demand, and an emergency generator may be an additional generator that controls only "life-critical" loads)

You will often see the same generator rated with Prime/Standby ratings.  The Prime rating is often about 10-25% lower than the standby rating.

See examples of differnt ratings on this spec sheet: http://www.generac.com/PublicPDFs/0169500SBY.pdf


Steve