Hurricane Beryl with Mep 802 and Light tower back up.

[Bluevic443]

It has been a while since my last check in. Well, we made through Hurricane Beryl with the minimum of damages all things considered. A lot of houses and infrastructure were damaged or destroyed. 7/8 the power went out at 2:30am. 5:30am flipped the main on the panel and switched to the Magnum 6kw light tower that I just purchased from auction. Ran the 4 ton AC with barely a change in tone of the D1005 Kubota.

 

[Bluevic443]

Back yard 6-8" standing water. All the 6' wooden fencing came down.
Back yard neighbor's tree came down crushing the fence.

Tree limb fell on the light tower while it was running. No Damage.
The poor MEP802 is covered with tree limbs and in 6-8" of standing water. Wires are staged to pull the meter and back feed the house. stayed on the light tower power till the water drained off. Note to self: Move the D@#$ generator out of the now low spot in the back yard!!!

 

[Bluevic443]

Notes from running on the Light Tower Marathon 6Kw pancake plugged into the 240v/30a twist lock:
7/8 at 5:30am started powering the whole house, 5198 hours. 4 ton AC unit started and ran fine. Added the neighbor's two refrigerators. The florescent and LED lights would flicker. The microwave just did not heat items as fast. Kept all electronics off.
With the AC running and all the little draws would pull 19-20 amps per leg. The little Kubota would barely change tone with the change in load, every impressed.
7/9 9am shut the Light Tower down to switch to the MEP802. Run time at this point was 31 hours. The crude fuel usage came to ~12 gallons or ~.4 gallons/hour. Really love the 30-gal onboard tank!!!
7/10 Ran heavy power cord from the light tower to the neighbor's panel. Would not start their small AC unit and would trip the 20 amp breaker on the LT. They do not have any Hard Start/Easy Start installed. Ran all their lights, fans, and refrigerators. Easy pulled 10 amp per leg.
7/11 Power was restored, 5265 hours, total run time 67 hours. THANKS TO ALL THE LINEMEN THAT CAME TO OUR NEED AFTER THE STORM HAD PASSED!!!!!!

Post storm review: Pros
The Kubota D1005/Marathon Pancake 6kw generator did not faulter at all even at 19-21 amps per leg.
Very impressed with the fuel usage at ~.4 gallons/hour. MEP802 ~.72 gallons/hour.
Cons: need to "Clean" the power output to maintain 60 Hz and 240 vac. Has anyone in the Forum installed an AVR, line filter, or other devices to "CLEAN" the output?????

 

[2Pbfeet]

What are you thinking by "clean"? "Clean" in what sense? No light flickers?

The Fukushima nuclear meltdown happened because the backup generators were installed at sea level.

All the best,

2Pbfeet

 

[rickf]

If you pull a meter in my state you will go to jail if it was not an emergency. And a power outage does not qualify as an emergency. There are much better, and safer, ways to connect aux power legally.

 

[Bluevic443]

What are you thinking by "clean"? "Clean" in what sense? No light flickers?

The Fukushima nuclear meltdown happened because the backup generators were installed at sea level.

All the best,

2Pbfeet

Clean AC power refers to:

1. AC power that oscillates at a perfect 60 Hz with no noise or distortion in the line (a perfect sine wave)1.
2. Electrical power that is free from spikes and voltage drops (voltage ripple)2.

The 802 has a much better out as for 60 Hz and voltage across L1 & L3 (240vac). Only the inrush current from the AC coming on would dime the lights.

The light tower is capacitor regulated and the voltage would swing with the change in current draw.

 

[G744]

A serious (not some plug-in job) surge protector wired to the output lugs will catch any transients over nominal voltage.

As far as flickering upon load applications causing momentary undervoltage conditions, that will require a lot of external circuitry like a Sola transformer that will consume about half of whatever power is going thru it on average.

Solas are a form of resonant transformer:

Ferroresonant Transformer – Voltage Disturbance

voltage-disturbance.com

For that electrical price, they do a pretty good job at holding voltage steady. Typically, they are a bit more efficient when the load is 80 to 100% of rating.

 

[2Pbfeet]

Clean AC power refers to:

1. AC power that oscillates at a perfect 60 Hz with no noise or distortion in the line (a perfect sine wave)1.
2. Electrical power that is free from spikes and voltage drops (voltage ripple)2.

The 802 has a much better out as for 60 Hz and voltage across L1 & L3 (240vac). Only the inrush current from the AC coming on would dime the lights.

The light tower is capacitor regulated and the voltage would swing with the change in current draw.

Ok... again, I'm glad that you made it through ok, and that you are thinking how to make your setup even better for the next one.

As a general rule, light tower generators are designed for just that; powering lights, and in their normal usage, a few flickers isn't going to bother anyone. So, I think it is not too surprising that the generator head and voltage regulation system on your system is, for lack of a better word, simple, and perhaps not very responsive to shifting loads. You might look into whether there are other AVRs available for that generator head. Sometimes changing the capacitor out for a new one can improve the stability a little, but I would not expect a miracle. In the presence of shifting loads, I think that stability in frequency and in voltage takes more than a little engineering and tuning, and nothing is perfect.

You can buy some low cost EMI filters to reduce harmonics, if that is an issue for you, but fewer and fewer items are sensitive these days. E.g. this 20A model

https://www.amazon.com/Uxcell-CW4L2-20A-S-Noise-Suppressor-Filter/dp/B016EJ5DU2

If you have equipment, e.g. electronics that are sensitive to harmonics, I would start by getting the sensitive equipment on a UPS, and behind a surge suppressor. If you are running VFDs during the outage, I highly recommend EMI filters, and line reactors, but that's an unusual use case for power outages.

Personally, during storms, I expect power lines to come down and lightning, and thus prefer, if possible, not to be running anything electrical.

All the best,

2Pbfeet

 

[spotrep]

Personally, during storms, I expect power lines to come down and lightning, and thus prefer, if possible, not to be running anything electrical.

Can you clarify what you mean by "not to be running anything electrical"? Do you mean "disconnect sensitive electronic devices" or prefer to "not be out in the elements physically moving wires and connecting generators"?

 

[2Pbfeet]

Can you clarify what you mean by "not to be running anything electrical"? Do you mean "disconnect sensitive electronic devices" or prefer to "not be out in the elements physically moving wires and connecting generators"?

My apologies for not being clear the first time.

Yes, I prefer to disconnect sensitive devices prior to and during storms. (I also prefer to have them on a UPS and at least one surge protector.) I have lived through what nearby lightning strikes can do, and how much it costs in work and replacement dollars to get back to the pre-storm state. For me, that means disconnection is the prudent thing. So, yes, step one is throwing the main breaker in advance, and second is unplugging items. I recognize that others will come to different cost/benefit results. More and more of our things are electrical, and more of those contain microelectronics that can be damaged by just a few extra volts. A whole house surge protector is a great first step, but not the only step in my view.

Yes, I try very hard not to be outside in the elements physically moving wires and connecting/operating generators. If you have to, you have to, but I am sensitive to the life safety risk of handling conductors in wet and unstable environments, not to mention blowing debris, falling limbs, and falling trees. For me, water and electricity are not good bedfellows...

For me personally, I can hunker down with a flashlight or candle and wait for the storm to pass almost all of the time. If someone's life depends on the power, that is a different story, as we all know.

All the best,

2Pbfeet

 

[spotrep]

thanks for the clarification! Concerning UPS's, I was under the impression they offered surge protection. I'm assuming you're referring to the smaller stand alone units and not like a whole home battery backup?

 

[2Pbfeet]

thanks for the clarification! Concerning UPS's, I was under the impression they offered surge protection. I'm assuming you're referring to the smaller stand alone units and not like a whole home battery backup?

As a preamble, surge suppressors come in a variety of types, a range of energy absorption capacities, and a spread of allowed voltage ranges. Most whole house suppressors clamp to ground at around @600V, and can dissipate 50-140,000A. E.g.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/dcc-data-extract/new-delta/asset/Compas/daily/Compas/Data%20Sheet/SIE_DS_FSPD_Boltshield.pdf?140224

Most common surge strips clamp at 150-500V, and a few hundred to a few thousand joules of energy, so amps to tens of amps, but you have to really read the details carefully, and I think that if you care about the ratings, I would buy from a vendor that has been around a few decades.

What kind and amount of surge suppression is in any given UPS is highly variable, and some designs are able to provide more surge suppression and isolation than others. E.g. an inline UPS takes AC, might run it by some surge suppressors/EMI absorbers, converts the AC electricity to DC, charges a battery (or batteries), has a second circuit to invert the DC to AC (usually pure sine wave AC), and send that out to the devices. So, an inline UPS will have the ability to dissipate a substantial amount of energy in the suppression circuit, plus the charge circuit, plus the batteries before any surge makes it to the AC supplying the devices. More typical UPS units have a direct AC connection between the input and the output and will provide little to no surge suppression or isolation.

Whole house battery backup systems, aka Energy Storage Systems, generally don't have any surge suppression built in. (Pretty poor engineering in my view, given the costs of these systems, but that's neither here nor there.) So, opening the main breaker will give the ESS some amount of isolation, and therefore the house some amount of isolation, but not a lot. A breaker is designed to switch +/-120 (US), and isn't designed or intended to isolate tens to hundreds of thousands of volts. So, if you have a whole house ESS, I think that it is prudent to shut the ESS completely down before the storm; batteries off, battery breakers off, main breaker off, main controller breaker off, and if there is solar, yes, I think those should be off too. Why put tens of thousands of dollars at risk for a couple of hours if you don't have to?

If you have a whole house manual transfer switch, that will give you a big step up in isolation compared to a breaker, but it is not a magic wand.

And, yes, I think that all of this applies to a space weather event with a forecast geomagnetic storm, too.

Homepage | NOAA / NWS Space Weather Prediction Center

www.swpc.noaa.gov

Does that help?

All the best,

2Pbfeet

 

[2Pbfeet]

@spotrep one of the reasons that I put IEC 60309 receptacles on my generators was to increase the safety of interconnections during wet weather. I was uncomfortable with the risks with the more common connections. The military finesses wet weather safety through the use of the cord pass through to the lugs.

All the best,

2Pbfeet

 

[Bluevic443]

Ok... again, I'm glad that you made it through ok, and that you are thinking how to make your setup even better for the next one.

As a general rule, light tower generators are designed for just that; powering lights, and in their normal usage, a few flickers isn't going to bother anyone. So, I think it is not too surprising that the generator head and voltage regulation system on your system is, for lack of a better word, simple, and perhaps not very responsive to shifting loads. You might look into whether there are other AVRs available for that generator head. Sometimes changing the capacitor out for a new one can improve the stability a little, but I would not expect a miracle. In the presence of shifting loads, I think that stability in frequency and in voltage takes more than a little engineering and tuning, and nothing is perfect.

You can buy some low cost EMI filters to reduce harmonics, if that is an issue for you, but fewer and fewer items are sensitive these days. E.g. this 20A model

https://www.amazon.com/Uxcell-CW4L2-20A-S-Noise-Suppressor-Filter/dp/B016EJ5DU2

If you have equipment, e.g. electronics that are sensitive to harmonics, I would start by getting the sensitive equipment on a UPS, and behind a surge suppressor. If you are running VFDs during the outage, I highly recommend EMI filters, and line reactors, but that's an unusual use case for power outages.

Personally, during storms, I expect power lines to come down and lightning, and thus prefer, if possible, not to be running anything electrical.

All the best,

2Pbfeet

You might look into whether there are other AVRs available for that generator head.
This was going to be my first attempt to get better regulation. properly sized for the generator head. Also reach out to Marathon, as I did not find much with google searches.

Sometimes changing the capacitor out for a new one can improve the stability a little, but I would not expect a miracle.
Read that the capacitor can age and need to be replaced. Would lay odds that they are original, so almost 9 years old.

Personally, during storms, I expect power lines to come down and lightning, and thus prefer, if possible, not to be running anything electrical.
Defiantly did not do any switch over till the sun came up and the majority of the storm had passed!!!

 

[Bluevic443]

After 6 days of cleanup, we are 3/4 of the way there. 7/11 at 10pm the power was restored in our area.


This line of debris is now twice as high.


Windows opened up and the flags back flying!!!