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Thanks, everyone-- this is good info and I appreciate y'all sharing your experiences. I didn't know the General PWRwall battery was problematic. I had visions of cleanly installed batteries on the garage wall with a small solar array tie in to keep them charged (or charged by the electrical grid) and possibly using a hew hours of battery power every day. Li versus LiFePO4 versus NiMH batteries... yes, maybe this technology is a few years away. And we get a bit of hail periodically, so I don't know whether solar is even a good idea. Still, I'd give it a closer consideration if I could find a local expert to talk to & bid it... but the solar companies around here are all salespeople that promise anything I want, but then hand me a contract that doesn't guarantee anything.
Nothing seems to be easy in OK. For all the projects I have going, I get differing opinions. If there was a consensus, it would be easier. The easiest installation would be to tee-off of the 2" gas line that was laid for the pool heater. (I misrepresented the pool heater in a previous post-- it's 400,000 BTU, not 40,000 BTU). My electrician is convinced it'll be fine, but another installer says that I'll need to get with my gas provider & "upsize" the meter to deliver more pressure. This 'full service' installer wants about $14K out-the-door for a Generac 26kW plus 200A transfer switch. Based on previous posts, 26kW may be overkill... but buying a 26kW was the one thing all the bids agreed on.
I can have the gennie & transfer switch delivered to my door for about $7100 (my local Ace Hardware). Electrician said he wants $2500 and will take care of all the permits & inspections. I have yet to get a gas plumber to call me back. I'm assuming that tee-ing off of the 2" gas line at the pool heater, running about 20' of gas line & hooking the gas to the generator, would be relatively inexpensive. And IF I need more capacity, the gas company will presumably do their thing for free...
I'd still need to pour my own pad & maybe a vibration isolator to reduce the noise..... & do the trenching if I want a cleaner installation.
So I might be in it for closer to $11K if I act as the GC... maybe?
A previous post mentioned that the Cummings generator was very quiet--- I'm not married to Generac. Does anyone know if there is a web-based source that publishes the decibel levels for these units-- Cummings, Generac, Kohler, Briggs?
And there is still this notion of sinewave power versus simulated sinewave. I don't know how much of a big deal to make out of that for most of the electric needs. For our computers, I bought pure sinewave UPS systems to address the frequent power "blips" that would always crash our PC's, and that is working out perfectly. Those units have already saved us from hard restarts at least a dozen times.
Last edited by MikeHeckish; 09-28-2023 at 09:31 AM..
Reason: Forgot to mention one last topic & spelling error
while i think my cummings is quieter than my friend's generac, that is only anecdotal.
but from my experience of owning and operating boats, we always preferred cummings or kohler on our boats. so, when i went shopping for home generators, i ask the owner of the company selling several different brands, which one he had at his house, he said "cummings." i said, "i will take what you have."
You don't want to get into waveform in alternating current unless you can spend a couple semesters worth of studying. Your UPS units will take care of the main issues anyway.
With a 2" line you can easily T off that and have plenty of reserve.
I just read a news article where a place repairing electric cars got hit by lightning and the whole place was destroyed. As I've said before, I'd rather store propane tanks in my house than a battery of any size.
From the dollar amounts you seem comfortable with, go with the larger gennie.
A grid tied system is much cheaper and has much less maintenance because it is the batteries that are so expensive and require constant care,
However, you do know that when the power grid is down, your solar electric won't work? If you are getting solar panels so you will have electricity in an emergency, then you need a battery system which is not connected the grid.
Yeah.. And if I didn't know that.. I would have figured it out really, really quickly the first time the power went out.. lol
Panels that feed power back to the power company stop generating power when the power goes out to prevent power feeding back onto lines and zapping a lineman.
The cost of batteries.. Plus, concerns about fire.. And the thought that the cost will come down made me decide to not go with a battery system.. I may add one down the road, though.
Well, that and the fact that my power company is pretty rock solid. There's pluses and minuses to being on an electric Co-Op.. One of the big minuses is power cost.. It's generally higher.. But, a big plus is.. They have their own line crews and a MUCH smaller area to cover.. So, any time there's a power outage, it usually is resolved quite quickly.
Now, the battery would allow me to store and use power during the hours when i'm home.. Which would give me further savings.. Which is why I haven't written the idea of doing it off entirely. Just.. Not yet.
Yeah-- we're doing the Generac 26kW. We were offered a 10 year warranty with the system and that sealed the deal. About $12K after all is done.
The motorized generator does seem to be a bit clumsy... I was hoping for this elegant solar & battery array, but that technology just doesn't seem to be reliable or efficient or cost-friendly for the basic homeowner level... Not yet, anyways.
The caveat for me is that I need to get with my NG provider & get an elevated delivery system. We have (as near as I can tell) between 1.2-1.3M BTU's of gas appliances if everything is running at the same time. That scenario will never happen, but that's what the NG provider wanted me to calculate. So I'll probably need a regulator dedicated to the internal appliances, one dedicated to the pool heater and one dedicated to the Gen... so unless the gas company does it, I'll be on the hook for more gas plumbing.
Before inverters were invented, they had what is know as a motor-generator-set. I would get one of these if I wanted an emergency power-source.
A DC-motor ran off batteries drives an AC-generator, then you have a truly pure AC-sinewave as output. Not nearly as efficient as an inverter.....but the output is a real AC-sinewave, avoiding the wonky problems you can get with an inverter running certain electronics, depending
on what the output-waveform looks like.
Before inverters were invented, they had what is know as a motor-generator-set. I would get one of these if I wanted an emergency power-source.
A DC-motor ran off batteries drives an AC-generator, then you have a truly pure AC-sinewave as output. Not nearly as efficient as an inverter.....but the output is a real AC-sinewave, avoiding the wonky problems you can get with an inverter running certain electronics, depending
on what the output-waveform looks like.
I'm not picking on you with the electronics stuff, really! I'm just OCD enough that not quite right in public information can bother me.
Reed inverters have been around for generations, arguably longer than motor-generators. Any small inverter built prior to the 1960s and transistors was most likely a reed inverter with a relay-like/solenoid-like part that vibrated to create square wave AC. Those could be modified to create a simple stepped square wave 120+ 0 120- or with some circuitry, a further modified wave that was a little closer to sine (but very messy).
Motor-generators are more commonly called rotary converters. They are still around for converting single phase to three phase for special loads, and as part of completely isolated UPS systems. More commonly, they were used to shift AC power to DC. The carbon arc lamps in movie projectors and spotlights need significant DC power, and the choice used to be to use big stacks of selenium diodes or a rotary converter. Converters were quieter (almost silent) compared to silicon stacks that needed fans to keep them cool.
The converter was a sweet solution that had lower losses, but it did have brushes that needed to be maintained and changed, and bearings to oil. I've used both systems in projection booths. Larger rotary converters also were used for traction motors, converting mains power to around 600 volts DC for trolleys and higher voltages for electrified railways.
As for sinewave output from a converter, yes you can get it initially. For UPS systems it works well for small loads (or an oversized converter). However... once you put a significant load on a small generator or converter, you will deform the waveform. If the load has more capacitance, it will deform one way, more inductance, it will deform a different way, heavier load, it will deform yet another way. In a previous post I mentioned not getting into AC waveform discussion without some serious study, and I am rusty myself on power factor and such.
The bottom line though, is that the large generators and immense reserve power in mains power minimizes waveform deformation (with properly sized cables) in a way that small home generators or converters cannot.
I'm not picking on you with the electronics stuff, really! I'm just OCD enough that not quite right in public information can bother me.
Reed inverters have been around for generations, arguably longer than motor-generators. Any small inverter built prior to the 1960s and transistors was most likely a reed inverter with a relay-like/solenoid-like part that vibrated to create square wave AC. Those could be modified to create a simple stepped square wave 120+ 0 120- or with some circuitry, a further modified wave that was a little closer to sine (but very messy).
Motor-generators are more commonly called rotary converters. They are still around for converting single phase to three phase for special loads, and as part of completely isolated UPS systems. More commonly, they were used to shift AC power to DC. The carbon arc lamps in movie projectors and spotlights need significant DC power, and the choice used to be to use big stacks of selenium diodes or a rotary converter. Converters were quieter (almost silent) compared to silicon stacks that needed fans to keep them cool.
The converter was a sweet solution that had lower losses, but it did have brushes that needed to be maintained and changed, and bearings to oil. I've used both systems in projection booths. Larger rotary converters also were used for traction motors, converting mains power to around 600 volts DC for trolleys and higher voltages for electrified railways.
As for sinewave output from a converter, yes you can get it initially. For UPS systems it works well for small loads (or an oversized converter). However... once you put a significant load on a small generator or converter, you will deform the waveform. If the load has more capacitance, it will deform one way, more inductance, it will deform a different way, heavier load, it will deform yet another way. In a previous post I mentioned not getting into AC waveform discussion without some serious study, and I am rusty myself on power factor and such.
The bottom line though, is that the large generators and immense reserve power in mains power minimizes waveform deformation (with properly sized cables) in a way that small home generators or converters cannot.
Thanks for the interesting post.
Wasn't the reed-switch invented after the first motor-generator set?
Wasn't the reed-switch invented after the first motor-generator set?
Nah. Because of the simplicity of it it likely was "invented" in the earliest days of electricity and dismissed.
If you want to have fun, do some searches for "Faraday Generators." If I wanted to go all out, I would make one of those. A university THREW OUT the copper disk involved in their research. I was dumbfounded. The concept of these generators is absolutely brilliant.
Wasn't the reed-switch invented after the first motor-generator set?
Just to throw more old knowledge in here.. lol.. A 'reed switch'.. At least the ones that I am used to.. Are usually small glass encased switches that close (or perhaps open) when a magnetic field goes around then.
I worked on an ANCIENT Point of Sale system back in the 90's that had a keyboard that used reed switches. You had 80 or so keycaps on it, each of which contained a magnet and when you pressed the key, it moved the magnet over the reed switch, closing the switch and shorting a row and column, telling the controller what key you had pressed.
The fact that something like that was still used in the 90's.. And.. Just FYI.. It was Hardee's in the southeast that used them. God awful things. They'd spill drinks on the registers, which, of course, landed on the keyboards. The acidity would eat at the legs of the reed switches. I probably replaced thousands upon thousands of them.
Of course, the sodas would also eat away at the traces on the circuit board.. So.. The backs of those keyboards looked like spaghetti we'd have to rewire them with so many jumpers to fix the broken traces.
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I'm just OCD enough that not quite right in public information can bother me.
