 Notice. New forum software under development. It's going to miss a few functions and look a bit ugly for a while, but I'm working on it full time now as the old forum was too unstable. Couple days, all good. If you notice any issues, please contact me. |
Forum Index : Electronics : I bought a new generator - what's it's output look like?
Page 1 of 2   |
|||||
| Author | Message | ||||
poida Guru  Joined: 02/02/2017 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1418 |
Due to the week long power outage we had and my mate is still without power and likely get it 10th July, I thought it worthwhile to buy a generator. I chose the Gentech 3.4kVA with the Honda GX200 engine. look at it here One pull and it runs. I sized it to do one thing only, to power a 2kW Eltek power supply configured to output 54.3V at whatever current it can, keeping below 2kW. And it does it easily. Time to see the output voltage and current of it. First we see the Eltek running on street power. Light Blue is voltage Pink is current. Arbitrary vertical scales.  Nice. Very good power factor, almost the same as a bar heater. Now the genny, with zero load.  Gentech proudly promote the fact it's "less than 5% THD" and it looks alright. Now under load, approx 2kW from the Eltek PS.  Not bad at all. The power factor is really high so that's good for the entire system (genny, Eltek and battery charge current) I am very happy with the unit and would recommend it to anybody. wronger than a phone book full of wrong phone numbers |
||||
| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578 |
Seems a good output and a quality unit. Is there a branding on the Alternator itself? I think gentech use a lot of Meccalites. I'd like a quality 2 bearing alt but they are not easy or cheap to come across. |
||||
| Godoh Guru Joined: 26/09/2020 Location: AustraliaPosts: 458 |
Davo many years ago I had a Powerlite 6kva genset. The motor blew up, so I used the very heavy adapter plate that fitted on the front of the alternator and machined a hole in it to take a bearing. I then pulled the motor apart and took the crankshaft out. It was a tapered shaft to I fitted the tapered shaft back onto the alternator and got a bearing to suit. I ran that with a pulley for years. It was fitted in a frame with a Holden Torana engine. The engine just idled along with a large pulley that stepped the motor speed up to 3000 for the alternator. So if you can find a dead motor with a good alternator it is only a matter of machining an adaptor plate to fit the front and presto. You have an alternator that can be run by any engine. Pete |
||||
| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578 |
Thanks For the Idea Pete. I was pondering getting a set with a dead engine and Pulling the Piston, conrod and cam Ans using the flywheel to drive a flat belt from the engine. Seemed a bit clunky but Could be trimmed down a bit with your idea. I might be able just to use the whole side case of the engine as a support and cut the crank and drive off that. The only difficulty in the idea comes from seeing a lot of units the other way round, Dead gen heads with functioning engines. Got to be some out there that have died due to not having oil as is a common cause. Very much worth keeping in mind and being on the lookout for suitable units though. Thanks again. |
||||
| Godoh Guru Joined: 26/09/2020 Location: AustraliaPosts: 458 |
Hi Davo, as many here build their own inverters and wind their own transformers, repairing a dead alternator is not that big a stretch. It is only a matter of working out if the rotor or stator is dead and carefully unwinding it and copying what was there. Some of the older generators that were brushless had two diodes on the rotor to act as current guides. Sometimes they died. I spend about 16 years of my working days rewinding electric motors. Really it is just basket weaving, making sure that the connections are right is the only really tricky part. Poida, the generator waveform looks pretty good but those spikes on the top and bottom of the sinewave look odd. If one were very finicky they could take it apart and reshape the pole pieces on the stator to put a bit more taper on the leading and trailing edge. But then as you say it is pretty good as it is. I have never put a scope on a genset only rewound them when they blew up. Which happened a bit. I learnt early on that using one to weld all morning then just stopping it at lunch time was not good. The windings cooked themselves while I was having lunch. I guess my apprentiship wasn't totally wasted. Pete |
||||
| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578 |
I think you give me far too much Credit, but thank you anyway. I did repair a Genny once. Friend gave it to me for the engine and when I Pulled the gen head apart to take it off I could see a broken wire near the slip ring so I re attached it and it worked. Regular Genius I am. I have read a lot about people chasing generator problems and seem there are many things that can go wrong at least when they have any Circuitry. Fixing an engine I would be comfortable with, The electrics is probably over my pay grade but.... I am willing to give anything a go if the price of failure is not too high. I have watched a lot of Vid on re winding gennys and motors, seems like it would need a lot of skill to me. Was that because the machine was just shut down and not given any time just to run and cool down without any load? That's something I have always been wary of with engines and pretty much anything that gets hot when working. I always let engines idle or run with no load for a bit to cool off and even if I am using a power tool like an electric drill I have been going with hard, I'll let that run a minute or so at low speed for the same reason. I figure they are all fan cooled so give the fan a chance to do it's job and bring the temps down to an acceptable level. I have seen on hard worked engines many times that when you go from giving them the beans to shut down with nothing in between, The temperature can go UP substantially and THEN you boil them. I try to let them run till they at least come down to normal operating temp. I notice the new welder I bought 12 Months or so ago must have a thermostatic Controlled fan. It runs for a bit after you switch it off. I must not have given that enough cool down time on occasion because sometimes it runs longer than others. |
||||
| Godoh Guru Joined: 26/09/2020 Location: AustraliaPosts: 458 |
Hi Davo, yep I did not let it run long enough and the heat from the iron core just soaked into the windings and shorted them. ( in too much of a hurry to get to lunch) I learnt from that one, and like you let things run for a while to get the temperature down now. I bought a new welder about 6 months back and the same thing, the fan keeps running for quite a while after I stop welding. Even when the power switch is turned off it still runs the fan until it reckons that it is cool enough. Nice touch really. I guess that you can always try scrap metal yards for dead generators, or Gumtree. I sold one on Gumtree that had a dead motor a few years back. The generator was one that had a shorted exciter winding when I got it. I rewound it and it worked great until the motor died. Often the generators only kill the exciter windings. With care you can extract them counting the turns, measuring the cross sectional area of the wire and replace the coils and away they go. Still there may be a few at the scrap yard that are good with dead motors. Worth a look from time to time. Cheers Pete |
||||
| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578 |
Had a look on Gumtree etc and nothing suitable but there area LOT of units being advertised still in the box or only started once. I saw a couple that stated bought for Chynaah Flu "Preparation" which may be telling why so many are now for sale unused or Virtually. Until The bS lockup ends here, won't be able to get to the scrapyard or anything else. Seems like a good time again to go through my own s(crap) and have another clean out. Be nice if the weather held so I could unload the shed and re pack it before the heat comes again and it's too damn hot to do it even at night. |
||||
| Godoh Guru Joined: 26/09/2020 Location: AustraliaPosts: 458 |
Wow Davo, you must live pretty far North on the big island for it to be so hot. Our days are around 5 to 8 degrees C where I live. Nights down near zero, just how we like it. (880 metres on a mountain on the little island south of Australia) I get way too hot if it gets above 19 degrees in Summer. No lockdowns here at all , no covid that we know of either. The lucky country indeed. Good luck with the search. Generators are great but for me they are only for backup charging in inclement weather. I really don't like the noise and smell. That great big furnace in the sky is much preferable Pete |
||||
| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578 |
No, not far North, just sh*tney or the outskirts thereof. It does get to 45 here regularly in summer and we had a couple of Nights last summer where It didn't get below 40 till 9PM. Generally the temps at Night fall pretty quick and pretty far but not always. Even when I was 20 Km from the city, the Humidity and the heat at night could make working uncomfortable. That was when I did do my shed clean outs. Set up a bunch of lights and get stuck into it. I could still be sitting on my backside sorting nuts and Bolts and be sweating. Yikes! You are a far Hardier man than I! I don't like heat ( ironically) but I loathe The cold and It does not agree with my Psychologically either given I'm already messed up in the melon. Makes me want to go into hibernation and I have to dose up on Vitamin D. Had deficiency a couple of times and not a good place to be. Here atm it's around 17-18 which is cool enough. Nights have been good, 5 of late but have had the frosts and -2 in the last few weeks. Still only just in the middle so I predict a lot more cold yet. Ha! Doesn't take me long to acclimatise and come December, I don't consider it to be hot till it's over about 32. We get RARE days of low humidity and even when it's 40, you know it's hot but it's bearable and not nearly as bad as a Muggy 30o Day. We had a couple of days of really low Humidity last summer and I was working outside and came in and said to the wife it's not too bad out there today. Then she showed me it was touching 40 which surprised me. That said, went to the tropics for a week couple of years back. Didn't find the Humidity bad at all. Came back here and the relative dry heat nearly killed me for a fortnight. Felt like I was in an oven being burnt. Weird but that's me. You should buy an investment property. I forecast a LOT of people wanting to move down there. You could roll it and make a fortune. Round here where I am, Houses were around 1.5 when we bought 4 years back. Now $2m is getting to the lower end of the market and that's for the places in the estates. Anything with land and decent is 2.2 which is what everything around me is selling for. Complete insanity! Neighbour said they are going to sell next year and their place is Definitely lower end and they have got valuations of 1.9 and the place needs a fair bit to bring it up to anything exciting. I reckon would cost $10K to have the jungle surrounding the house removed and let some light in the place. Probably one of the smaller places around here too not real presentable inside or out. That is pretty much my idea. I had over 25Kw of solar on the place but removed a fair bit to put up bigger and newer panels I have bought. Probably finish up some where around the 30 KW mark. That's not to make massive power but rather to cater to this very time of year when I can often struggle to average 20Kw a day over the week. Sunny day I can still do near 50 with what I have atm but cloud or rain and it's lucky to crack double figures. The great thing with solar is it can sit there everyday for 10 years+ and require no maintenance or so little as to amount to none. Engines/ Generators do wear out much quicker and while the maintence does not worry me, they are wearing out ever time you use them and it's real easy to rack up big hours. Even batteries on Solar are far more long lived than mechanical devices. Having too much time on my hands I have been looking into a lot of things with the National Grid. The Fixation with unreliable energy which is just a cost saving for the power cos and the gubbermint throws money at it as well, the do good ideals of the greens and social media educated to get rid of coal and the lack of generation and storage to replace the numerous power stations they are hell bent on getting rid of, makes me more than convinced there are going to be severe power shortages in the next 3-5 Years. There are many authorities concerned about the same thing but of course that is downplayed and dismissed to Joe Public. If/ when it happens, it will be duck shoving to someone else as is always the way but there will be years of problems and Billions required to fix the problem. RE is NOT cheaper at all and the cost of storage is Horrendous so at best, the lull in power prices now seen I believe are going to be short lived and completely blown out the water. May be just as cheap to run a petrol genny as buy power and you will be able to have it when you want it rather than just when it's available. There are SO many holes in the whole RE story which of course are Glossed over in the media and by the gubbermint it isn't funny. Add to that the countries that have gone down that road have all had disasters and are backing away from it but the proponents always say that we'll will be able to do the same thing and get a different result. One only has to have solar on their roof and see the variances in generation and how little power a crappy week yields to see the problems. The idea of having grid level storage for a day is laughable enough, for a week is fantasy that some do fall for. I very much hope I am wrong and they somehow get it right BUT... like people that have had blackouts find out, too late to go buying generators then when they are all cleaned out. I like playing with them anyway and the hobby money invested gives me a bit of fun and a LOT of peace of mind. I have also been running Diesels on veg oil for 21 years this year so that will be my fuel of choice. Might prove easier to get than diesel if things go the wrong way and it will certainly be cheaper! I am trying to put together a silenced genset atm and build an enclosure and cogen it to provide heat in the feared winters. The smell from my gennys will be Fish and chips or Doughnuts. May well be in years to come, I too am selling a hardly used Genny if I am wrong. I hope so. |
||||
| Godoh Guru Joined: 26/09/2020 Location: AustraliaPosts: 458 |
Davo, nope I won't be buying an investment property, I tell everyone that Tassie is, windy, cold and wet. I like it with not too many people. Your solar system is huge. Most of the last 40 years I got by with between 300 and 600 watts of panels. Now we have what I consider a massive system of around 4kw. It is only that big to cover the days when we don't get any sunshine. We get mountain fog that sometimes sticks around all day, so no power comes in. I reckon that after a year living in the South, that ones blood has the consistency of molasses, when living in the North it is more like kerosene. It takes about a year to adjust to the cold, but after that any day is fantastic. We live off grid, there was a grid connection here when we bought the place, but it was pretty unreliable and difficult to take for a minimalist who had no power bills for the last 40 odd years ( except for one year living in civilisation). So we got the power mob to pull the lines down and I cut the posts down. They make good gate posts. Have fun Pete |
||||
| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578 |
Yes, and my house is large, has terrible thermal efficiency, we are totally electric bar the little Diesel heater I have been playing with this last 6 weeks or so and we get below zero temps in winter and 45 in summer. Now unless I miss my guess, you have some other heating, probably wood, live in a well insulated house, gas or wood water heating and obviously don't get the temp extremes we do. Climate is far and away our biggest killer. I am amazed that people can live on so little power. Back about March when we were not heating or cooling and I was not welding or anything else, we were still pulling 20Kwh a day. We have electric cooking, water heating and the sewerage system but still seems a lot. I'm not sure where it all goes and really, I don't care too much. As much as it goes against the regular thinking, I get more satisfaction out of making power than saving it and truth be told, with my wife and daughter, Trying to conserve anything is just going to lead to frustration and arguments so I don't bother. Much easier, more fun and far less aggro just to put up a shipload of panels and be happy! :0) I like to play with different ideas of power saving and there are many things I'd do given free reign but I would prefer to stay Married as she puts up with a dud like me in the first place so other more important considerations to take into account. What we spend on power a year is greater for the network supply rip off charges than the power we use I will settle for that and be happy for the benefits it provides as long as that remains the case. When things change, so will my position. I have actually got surprising support for my co-gen initiative from the Mrs, Encouragement I'd go as so far to say so wont push my luck too far. That has project slowed in progress due to the moronic lock-ups and by the time it's done, I won't need heat or power but such is life. I think I will set the co-gen up with an Induction motor/ generator as that will probably better for the heating aspect which is the main goal but I can easily switch to a normal genny just by changing the head. All the work will really be in setting up the engine. I would love a small off grid place where I could have wood heating for space and water, some panels and batteries and especially a location where I could do a Micro Hydro. That would be the holly grail for my proclivities. About a 1 in 100 chance but one can dream. I'm sure I could live on little power like that but probably would still be interested in making plenty. One thing that amazes me and has also frustrated others is just how near impossibly difficult it is to get low, cost Twin bearing alternators here around 3-5 Kw. There are Millions made in china and other places but just seems next to none make it to Oz. I tried contacting 4 sellers on alliexpress last week and the shipping charges are a joke, literally 2-3 Times the cost of the machine and pushing the total well over the $1000 mark. Even the generator places I have tried in Syd have next to none Belt drive units and bell housings to couple up any alt of that size in 4 pole to an engine are not available either. OK for 50 KVA and up but 5 Kw,? Not that I can find. What they do have is not justifiably priced for my purposes but that said, I have been looking for years and still waiting for something to fall in my lap. Most Frustrating! I'll keep an eye out for a 3000 RPM screamer to convert! |
||||
| Godoh Guru Joined: 26/09/2020 Location: AustraliaPosts: 458 |
Sounds like a big setup Dave. Having a partner who supports the desire to be off grid helps heaps. Our house is tiny, brick veneer, I took the roof off and insulated it.(cathedral ceiling). Yep we have a wood heater, that heats the hot water and has an oven and hotplates. We cook on it in winter. Not so extreme in weather here. Around 3 to 5 degree days in winter, 15 to 25 in summer. Rarely see a day over 30, then we melt. Power yep 4kw of panels, 660 amp hour battery bank with a parallel bank of 500 Farad capacitors to help with motor starting. A very optimistic 8kw Taiwanese inverter and a backup 2300 watt latronics that seems to do everything the supposed 8kw inverter does. Lighting is 12 volt via a buck converter, all LED. You could always build yourself a permanent magnet alternator. I have seen peoples efforts there with machining and fitting magnets to the rotor of an induction motor. Have fun Pete |
||||
| Warpspeed Guru Joined: 09/08/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 4406 |
I can understand that. When I started out with all this a very long time ago, the very first thing I did was a complete power audit of every electrical load I have here, and it was very revealing. The idea is NOT to change your lifestyle or the way you do things, but to try and work out if there are things that can be improved, replaced, or made more efficient without changing usage patterns. For example, replacing an ancient CRT computer monitor with flat screen LCD. Replacing an old and inefficient refrigerator. Replacing incandescent light bulbs and fluorescent tubes with LED lights. Replacing an electric tumble dryer with (home made) natural gas heated unit. Replacing washing machine with much more energy efficient F&P. But the real eye opener was that its not the big intermittent loads that matter as much as the small loads that run continuously 24 hours per day that really suck Kwh. Things like microwave ovens and electric kettle or power tools may be 2.5+Kw but only run for a minute or two at a time. Electric wall clocks (12-15watts each) replaced with battery wall clocks (one AA cell per year). There were about a dozed small continuously running loads for example. Some things now run off a time clock. None of this had any effect on my lifestyle, but I was able to reduce my daily Kwh to slightly less than half !! It can be done, and you don't have to live like a peasant in a third world country. Edited 2021-07-01 10:10 by Warpspeed Cheers, Tony. |
||||
| Godoh Guru Joined: 26/09/2020 Location: AustraliaPosts: 458 |
Poida, just wondering if you have ever put a scope onto any other generators? I am guessing that some are pretty ordinary but just wondering what they look like. As in which ones to avoid if one wants to run noisy, smelly machines sometimes. Pete |
||||
| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578 |
Yeah, I can sure see how it would. In winter when I get on their backs they do try but I think mainly forget. Occasionally I get asked if the dryer can be used or something else which TBH, fills me with pride and satisfaction they are listening. Most of the time, it's not the main thing on their mind which is fair enough. Mine is like a Glasshouse. People have said get it double glazed but the cost is impractical. Basically it would be far cheaper to pay the power bills even without solar than it would be to do that for the 10 or so years I anticipate being here and probably beyond. If I can offset that cost with solar, wood, oil or anything else, then it's simply not viable. The roof and walls are insulated.... to varying effectiveness but I can well see the windows and doors everywhere are what screw this place over efficiency wise. I was more than Naive when we bought it, tried to look and take into account a lot of things but missed that one. I would like it to be better and I won't miss that again but fortunately it's not the end of the world and there are work arounds like solar and others. Would LOVE an Aga or similar. Mrs wants a wood heater, I don't because I know the work that goes into them. Plus a chimney is going to screw my solar with shading. -IF- we got one, it would have to be in the form of a fuel stove for it to be worth it to me. I pointed out a place where we could put it in the new Kitchen and first there was ridicule but there has been questions asked since so the idea once again isn't as terrible as it seems on second thoughts. My aunt and Uncle have one in their house and I have always thought it was brilliant and wanted one. Friends when I was a kid had one in their house in the country and I have so many memories of that. Getting up when there was snow on the ground and everyone in the big kitchen cooking breakfast and basking in the warmth. The smell of the wood and the green and cream Colour of the old early Kooka's. I come across the shock horror of telling people how much power we use a lot but it's always from people whom have other energy sources. Talking to neighbours, we are all similar. Some obviously have much better house designs with actual walls instead of glass but then have pools or use similar amounts of power. Because of the solar, we use a lot but our bill say we average the use of half of that of a single person household. All the bills except winter are more for supply charges than the power we buy so not bad really. When you have wood and gas, it's easy to just think of the power bill or the power one uses but it's not so easy to take into account what these other sources are generating. All my energy consumption is on one document, other peoples tends to be spread. There is also a lot more energy in wood and gas than electricity and gas seems cheaper although the reports tend to vary a lot. Yes, I would like to do that but reality is I won't. If i had a lathe and more metal working machinery I'd be all over it but as it stands I'd have to get it done outside and I would rather pay to get a commercial Genny and be done with it. I did build a 7 Phase axial Flux alternator out of a F7P motor many years back and have another one up the shed to play with. The interest in them seems to have wained with the cheap availability of PV now. I need to look into ways I can merely unplug the panels from the GTI and put them into something that will give me AC. I know there are Hybrid inverters but the thousands they cost is against my religion of the house of Tightarse and couldn't be justified for the outages we have.... so far. Not that I think think the situation will remain. I really need to look at 2 aspects, backup power for Grid down and backfeed power for the crappy weather we are having now and to keep the generation up. IMAG is my preference for the grid feed and a regular genny for the outages with secondary being the solar. I prefer to not invest in batteries until I can practically justify the cost when my situation changes. |
||||
| Godoh Guru Joined: 26/09/2020 Location: AustraliaPosts: 458 |
Hi Dave, we are getting a bit off topic but on the idea of double glazing. Most of our windows were only single glazing, I bought some pvc sheet ( 3mm) and cut it to size and fitted it over the glass on the frames. It gave a gap between the glass and plastic sheeting and made quite a bit of difference to the heat loss and gain. There is also a product that is just like clingwrap, can't recall the name but I tried it on another house. It worked but not as good as the 3mm PVC. Pete |
||||
Revlac Guru Joined: 31/12/2016 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1024 |
Hi Pete, I might have to rewind a generator one day so I might have some questions, I guess some small generators might not be worth the effort of rewinding, but the larger 20Kva ones are worth rewinding as its to many $$$ to buy another. It would be the stator that needs rewinding, don't think it would be too difficult to work out. A smaller 6kva stator also needs fixing but it would be a pita as its hard to get at in the frame/housing, someone put big magnets in the rotor to help excite it, just creates some horrible spikes on the sine wave. I could check the sine wave on a common 2200w aldi geny if you like. Cheers Aaron Off The Grid |
||||
| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578 |
I did a very basic look at what we have here and exactly as you say, It was revealing. Biggest surprise is how much the sewer system uses. That's really out of sight, out of mind but it can be 4 Kwh a day on it's own, depending on the load from washing, showering etc. The thing I came up with is there are a lot of little loads and THEY are the hard ones to deal with. If I want to weld or run the hot water if I were off grid, No problem, fire Up a genny and all good. Not going to go down the road I saw last night looking at generators where a company specified one for " Charging a Phone". Say what?? Batteries would be fine for these little constant loads and things at night but as said. can't justify them yet.... unless I come across a pile at the scrapyeard or something that are decent. Not holding my breath. As you say, when you work out how much the fish tank uses or The wifes salt lamp she insists on having or all the other little things, not even what is on standby, it adds up. Trying to get the Mrs and Daughter to put the dishwasher on through the day or the drier would be WWIII in itself so that's fundamental. I have looked at energy efficent homes and they can be big and comfortable and economical as well. Don't know what they cost to Build. I could only find 3 people in Sydney doing them but they aren't cheap. I saw one out of the about 100 we looked at before buying this place and it was worth no more than any other in the area of the same standard. Same as Panels add nothing to the value of a Home. Reality is My years are limited so that always has to be played off against the investment cost. If I was 27 again and just paid off my first house, would be different, I think, but now.... I can't see it paying off for us or my daughter whom we want to leave as much as possible. Have most of those covered. No crts]s but I'll bet the size of the flat screens we have makes them look economical, Did the lighting thanks to a great sale Bunnings had on LEDS 2 years back and bought a lifetime supply as spares, Fridge is pretty new given the old one caught fire, Drier, no, that's just the old resistance type and about 12 months old. I couldn't see us ever using it enough to save the $1000 Difference on a heat pump model and given we have so much solar.... Washing machine is also nearly new but the conventional Type although I have put a meter on that it it uses bugger all really. Even if it were 50% less, not going to make any real difference to what we use. Ah, yes, exactly as I found. For us though winter is the problem. We need to pump a LOT of heat into this place and the solar is of course limited despite the silly amount I have. Summer I can run the Big AC day and night and the solar is making so damn much power I switch half it off and still make more than we can use. That's why I looked at the diesel heater and it's worked. Down from 60-to 80 Kwh a day to averaging 30-40 this winter. Big Difference. If I get the co-gen or the veg heater going we are pretty right despite all the other inefficiency. Problem with the diesel is I need to be able to find free sources of fuel. Haven't tried yet, might be possible, may not. I'll have to put out the feelers and see. The cogen I can run on veg oil and the less than 1000L I'd need per winter would be a walk in the park to get same as with a straight veg burner. Yes, what I am aiming for with the solar and generator. It would be wonderful to have a modern energy efficient home but unless you build one. They are like hens teeth to find any around here that's for sure. Edited 2021-07-01 12:52 by Davo99 |
||||
| Godoh Guru Joined: 26/09/2020 Location: AustraliaPosts: 458 |
Hello Aaron, I will do my best to answer your questions. Rewinding a stator is not hard as long as you are careful getting the particulars of what is there. eg. ---Wire guage, the wire is measured in circular millimeters. Measure the Cross sectional area then look up on a chart or calculate the are in mm squared. ---Number of wires in parallel. This is got by undoing the bindings and looking at how many wires are on each flexible lead going to the terminal block. ---There will be a main winding and usually an exciter winding, so turns of each, guage of each and number of wires in parallel are required. Also measure the projection (how far the winding comes out each end of the core.) projection is important or the end plates don't fit or short out the windings. Then when you are ready and have the particulars you need to work out the size of the former to wind the coils on. A board with pegs works but I tend to use round wooden formers. Usually if the windings are concentric ( small coils inside larger ones ) then I make the number of formers that I need and put them on a slotted bar so that they can be adjusted in and out. It is easier to get the coils off after they are wound. anyway enough for now, I can answer questions if you need more guidance. As far as energy efficiency goes well my power systems have got bigger over the years. The first five years living in the country I had no power at all. Then I went to a 300 watt solar system for the next 18 years. Then gradually up to our monster (to me) 4kw system. I remember when solar panels first appeared, in those days an X20 ( 20 watt panel) was around $350. Haven't things changed over the decades. I am guessing that the first panels I saw on the market were around 40 years ago now. Cheers Pete |
||||
| Page 1 of 2 |
|||||
 Print this page |
