MEP-003A Load test

[Roadracer86]

View attachment 521163View attachment 521162Got it.

Took the liberty of snapping a couple of pics for the parts for the op.

Ok cool, so the 100a picture is the Square D box. I'll snap some photos once I get everything set up; do you think a Copper rod spike for ground is needed or can you use a solid steel ground spike?

 

[Roadracer86]

Ok, I've lost ya here; the bonded jumper is on the skid frame of the generator correct? Mine is connected and it also has a copper lead that runs from that bonded jumper to a flat part of the trailer with a butterfly nut. I was thinking the bonded jumper stays connected and I run a copper wire from that trailer ground to a grounding rod or spike. Correct me if I'm wrong; I'd rather be safe the then sorry and possibly dead. :0

 

[DieselAddict]

That is the correct setup for what you are going to do. With that bonding jumper in place you will improve the safety of the setup by connecting the neutral at the box and at the generator even though for the load it isn't necessary.

 

[Roadracer86]

That is the correct setup for what you are going to do. With that bonding jumper in place you will improve the safety of the setup by connecting the neutral at the box and at the generator even though for the load it isn't necessary.

When you say box are you talking about the L1, L2, L3 and L0 box correct or the Square D box with the breaker? Just want to make sure I don't destroy anything in the process.

 

[DieselAddict]

You will want to connect the neutral wire in your cable to the neutral lug at the generator as well as connecting it to the neutral terminal in the breaker box.

 

[Roadracer86]

You will want to connect the neutral wire in your cable to the neutral lug at the generator as well as connecting it to the neutral terminal in the breaker box.

Ok, thank you just want to make sure. I appreciate everyone's help!!! You guys are wonderful.

 

[Ratch]

I would use 3 elements on 3 separate runs of #12 romex, directly to the generator reconnect lugs, without any extra hardware in the middle. That will be over the units rated capacity and sufficient for a test.


I would wire it up, keep bare wire insulated or stay away from it, ground the genset as you described, then fire it up, warm it up, and close the generator breaker. If it can't take it, immediately open the breaker. Then pull one lead off one element and let it hang out there for the test (it will be a live wire, as will the unconnected terminal on the element, so probably safer to remove that elements wire or just run two elements).

Start it back up, close the breaker, and go get a few tea leaves for the hot water you're making.





For safety, I would not walk away from the rig with it running, and make sure you and anyone that may be around (like the buyer) know what the energized metal is. It will be the lugs, which will be under the cover, and the screw terminals on the water heater elements. Everything else should be insulated and touchable, though it reduces risk to not touch anything but the genset controls, and water container to check for heat.





I wouldn't go to a breaker box, because I don't see much purpose to it other than having another on/off switch or maybe a lowered trip point than the generator's breaker. It seems unnecessary to me, there's no code issue requiring it and it adds connection points to complicate and potentially short.





Electricity is rightfully scary, but if you're smart, pay attention, and use ground rods, you should be fine. If it worries you a lot, shut everything down before going near the wiring or terminals.

 

[Roadracer86]

I would use 3 elements on 3 separate runs of #12 romex, directly to the generator reconnect lugs, without any extra hardware in the middle. That will be over the units rated capacity and sufficient for a test.


I would wire it up, keep bare wire insulated or stay away from it, ground the genset as you described, then fire it up, warm it up, and close the generator breaker. If it can't take it, immediately open the breaker. Then pull one lead off one element and let it hang out there for the test (it will be a live wire, as will the unconnected terminal on the element, so probably safer to remove that elements wire or just run two elements).


Start it back up, close the breaker, and go get a few tea leaves for the hot water you're making.





For safety, I would not walk away from the rig with it running, and make sure you and anyone that may be around (like the buyer) know what the energized metal is. It will be the lugs, which will be under the cover, and the screw terminals on the water heater elements. Everything else should be insulated and touchable, though it reduces risk to not touch anything but the genset controls, and water container to check for heat.





I wouldn't go to a breaker box, because I don't see much purpose to it other than having another on/off switch or maybe a lowered trip point than the generator's breaker. It seems unnecessary to me, there's no code issue requiring it and it adds connection points to complicate and potentially short.





Electricity is rightfully scary, but if you're smart, pay attention, and use ground rods, you should be fine. If it worries you a lot, shut everything down before going near the wiring or terminals.

Great points Ratch; I've been thinking about this and adding an additional element would make it that more of a proper test. I'm assuming that the ground lug on the set L0 will not be used and I'll just run the L1 and L3 lugs to each post on the 3 heater elements each with their own #12 romex wire. The ground wire on the romex will not be used in this case correct? I'll just ground the genst to earth off of the trailer post ground which is connected to the bonded jumper on the genst skid.

 

[Ratch]

Wow, the formatting was all screwy posted from my phone last night, and I didn't see it until now... Anyway...

You're understanding seems to be correct.

You didn't mention it, but I noticed in rereading that I was kinda unclear on one thing. What I meant about taking off the third element was to shut the set down, and remove it's direct wire from the lugs. Originally, I said just pull the wire from the element, but then you'd have a bare energized wire hanging around waiting to short or shock someone.

I was in Home Depot last night for oil burner tune-up stuff, and figured while I was walking past them, I'd grab a pic of the heater elements we're talking about. I couldn't upload from my phone, so doing it here.

There's a nagging voice that says something with the setup is not right... But I can't put my finger on it.
edit: I looked at my rig last night, and it's set up with 2 elements in series, and I think I was running a 5kw into it last, so that makes sense. I start confusing myself because the elements are rated in watts, and I change it 12 ohms/18.7 amps to calculate resistance and current for using different combinations to create different loads, then end up mixing up the numbers because they're so dang low.

 

[Ray70]

I think the setup sounds right, Parallel resistance divides, so hooking (3) 4500W elements to the L1 and L3 lugs using 3 separate pairs of wires will still give you 13,500w of load, right? Since it will divide the resistance by 3, thus allowing 3X more current to flow? Maybe you're confusing resistance and power, and making yourself think something is wrong?? wait, now I'm starting to second guess myself . Any second now one of our electrical guru's will jump in and set us straight!

 

[Ratch]

I just stopped and did the actual math (it was bugging me that I'd screwed it up or second guessed myself).
Resistance will divide, but since we're talking about watts and not resistance, it becomes confusing. Running them in parallel does divide the resistance, but the math still works out to the expected wattage, so parallel is the way for him to go. The current is higher, so if he were running one wire with it split and jumpered at the element's connections, he'd need to run heavier wire off the genset. But since he's running 3 separate wires, the current across each will still be within the wire's capacity, though it will be drawing more before it divides at the lugs.

 

[leedawg]

Wow, the formatting was all screwy posted from my phone last night, and I didn't see it until now... Anyway...

You're understanding seems to be correct.

You didn't mention it, but I noticed in rereading that I was kinda unclear on one thing. What I meant about taking off the third element was to shut the set down, and remove it's direct wire from the lugs. Originally, I said just pull the wire from the element, but then you'd have a bare energized wire hanging around waiting to short or shock someone.

I was in Home Depot last night for oil burner tune-up stuff, and figured while I was walking past them, I'd grab a pic of the heater elements we're talking about. I couldn't upload from my phone, so doing it here.

There's a nagging voice that says something with the setup is not right... But I can't put my finger on it.
edit: I looked at my rig last night, and it's set up with 2 elements in series, and I think I was running a 5kw into it last, so that makes sense. I start confusing myself because the elements are rated in watts, and I change it 12 ohms/18.7 amps to calculate resistance and current for using different combinations to create different loads, then end up mixing up the numbers because they're so dang low.




View attachment 521315

Ratch you are correct that resistance in parallel does indeed drop total resistance down. However resistance is not the load in this case we are concerned with watts of power that the generator is dissipating across the circuit or how much work we are doing. I agree though it makes my head hurt thiking about the theory and it is counter intuitive. However if you had 3 light bulbs 100 watts each and put them in parallel they would all burn at full brightness, and in series they would be much dimmer 1/3 their full brightness because the current through each one would be less in series. For the heating elements the equations would be roughly as follows.


P/V=i where P is watts, V is voltage and i is current

So say the heater elements are 4500 watts we will let that = P
and V is equal to 240 Volts

you get 4500/240= 18.75 amps of current there.

P is also equal to i^2 *R where P is still watts i is current in amps and R is resistance.

So to solve for total resistance you would have

4500/(18.75^2)=R which would give you a value of 12.8 ohms resistance roughly.

Total power dissipated over the circuit is 2 times 4500 or 9000 watts of power.

 

[Roadracer86]

Thanks guys,
So far I'm going to use a 3 separate wire set up with three elements rated at 240v 4500 watts. One thing that I came up with that I think will work with mounting these elements into or onto the side of the 55 gallon steel drum is a 1 inch pipe thread flange that I can mount with screws and seal with silicon. This way I don't have to try to weld something to the drum and worry about leaks. The element screwed right into the flange which was ideal. I'll build this tomorrow and give it a go on Sunday.......

Don't worry Ratch I was going to shut the set down and pull one of the sets of wires instead of disconnecting a hot wire from the element. Thanks for warning me though ya never know what someone's skill level or mentality is..........in my case I worry about myself sometimes.

 

[leedawg]

Here is my load bank took some pictures. I think your pipe flange silicone idea will work just fine. Actually a pretty good idea especially if you do not have a welder or dont feel like welding fittings in.

I just welded pipe couplers into the sides of this old pressure tank I had laying around. Then threaded the heater elements into the pipe fittings works great. You can see my breaker box mounted to the side of the tank two elements per breaker with switches to drop one of the two on each breaker so you can step the load by one element at a time. 6 4500 watt elements all together.

 

[Roadracer86]

Nice work Lee; my welds would never look that good hence the silicon and flanges. My welds always come out looking like chewed bubble gum with more holes than swiss cheese. I'll snapped a few pics of my make shift rig before the melt down on Sunday. Should be interesting.

 

[Roadracer86]

Ok, load test completed; 13,500 watt with 100% load and it ran like a champ. My make shift water boiler worked wonderful, thanks guys for all your input. Could not have done it without ya. Here's a video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SL23eFODgQ&feature=em-upload_owner

 

[Ray70]

Nice looking -003, seems like the new owner will be getting a good machine! Out of curiosity, did the little bit of smoke from the exhaust clear up at all after running it hard? One of my 002's smokes a little at 100%+ load and I've read where some machines just need a good hard workout to get the injectors cleared up and others run a bit of ATF in the fuel to clean em' out.
Also, make sure those upper 2 heating elements stay submerged or they'll burn out quick!
Good work....

 

[Keith_J]

There will be some smoke at that load, should clear up at 9000 watts of load.

or you could run it in three phase with one element on each phase, at 208 volts this would be close to 12 kW load. You can slightly adjust the voltage to fine tune the load. I've run my 002a on one 4500 watt element at near 260 volts for an 80% load.

 

[Roadracer86]

Nice looking -003, seems like the new owner will be getting a good machine! Out of curiosity, did the little bit of smoke from the exhaust clear up at all after running it hard? One of my 002's smokes a little at 100%+ load and I've read where some machines just need a good hard workout to get the injectors cleared up and others run a bit of ATF in the fuel to clean em' out.
Also, make sure those upper 2 heating elements stay submerged or they'll burn out quick!
Good work....

It smoked some but I've only run this thing with slight loads such as hand drills and an 110 volt welder for a few minutes so the exhaust is probably chalked full of oil from running this thing for 26 hours with little or no load. I bought it with 3 hours on the clock since the reset from Letter Kenny and it has just 29 hours on it today. I only ran it loaded for 5 minutes and the smoke seemed to lighten up a bit towards the end but I didn't want to over do it so I shut her down before it had a chance to clean out the built up oil in the exhaust. I probably should have run it at 9K watts for a while which would be easier on the machine and provide a bit more cycle time but hindsight is always 20/20 they say. I never heard of running ATF in the fuel to clean up the injectors; does anyone know how much to put in the 8 gallon tank? I'll pass this info onto the new buyer so that would be good to know.

With the elements higher in the barrel I put them there as opposed to the bottom for fear of higher pressure and possible leaks; with them higher in the barrel I had zero leaks so it worked out perfect and the machine running 3 elements started to steam the water in less than 3 minutes. And that water was fresh out of the well so it was pretty cold. Pretty amazing if you ask me.

 

[leedawg]

Looks great just watched the video, looks like a fine load bank you set up there. I really like the flange bolting idea with the silicon looks like it held up pretty well. Genny looks like a great unit why are you selling it, seems hard to come by them in that good of shape. And how much are you getting for that thing just out of curiosity.