Woke up to Orange Sun, Raining Ash & No Power

[Chainbreaker]

Tuesday morning got up and power was out. Went outside & nothing but thick acrid smoke in the air and could barely see an orange sun through smoke and there was black & grey ash coming down like light snow!

Edit: Here's a picture from my phone I took of sky/sun this morning. Very eerie to say the least!



The reason for our local rural power outage is because our Utility Company around midnight Monday decided to shut down power pre-emptively due to high winds & low humidity in our area during RED alert fire conditions. Unfortunately, the Blue River fire (aka the "Holiday Farm Fire" about 40 miles east of us) blew up overnight due to high winds & destroyed 100 buildings. News said to expect loss of life in that fast moving fire.

So, I fired up my #1 generator and life was "almost normal" considering the fire situation, and we were able to watch local news to keep tabs on the fires around us. However, about 5 hours later all of a sudden when I was outside about 75' away I heard gen #1 just quit like it was purposely shut down. Not a good sign! I went over and checked fuel, oil, batteries and all were good. I made a decision that since I have my backup generator #2 parked next to it I would now use it rather than trying to diagnose the problem on genset #1 and not have the house powered up. We really needed to be able to keep tabs on local news reports on area fast moving fires in these high wind low humidity conditions.

Once I got Gen #2 up & running and the house back online, I tried to start Gen #1 and it started right up but quit approximately 10 seconds later...hmmm. I then decided to try a 2nd start, so I could observe oil pressure and the stop solenoid as I expected genset to fail again. However, this time it started right up and proceeded to run 15+ minutes straight & might have run longer if I allowed it to run longer. Since I had house back online now using gen #2, next priority was to go down to barn to start #3 generator. We needed to fill up horse water using our 2nd well on separate electrical service entrance. Thankfully, #3 Genset started right up and has been running well all day keeping the horses & wife happy.

Unfortunately, due to more pressing matters I could not get back to troubleshooting gen #2 today as friends living 25 miles east of us had to evacuate their horses off their property and bring them over to our property which "for now" is a safe haven.

When I get some time I plan to get back to gen #1 to do some more troubleshooting.

Anyway, I experienced the 2 is 1, 1 is none rule firsthand. I feel fortunate that I chose to invest in having redundant backup gensets ready to roll!

 

[nextalcupfan]

Wow things seemed to go from 0 to 100 real quick over there.
Any fault lights? And did you test the fault lights?First guess is an intermittent short on one of the protection circuits. (Fuel, Oil, water)

 

[Chainbreaker]

Wow things seemed to go from 0 to 100 real quick over there.
Any fault lights? And did you test the fault lights?First guess is an intermittent short on one of the protection circuits. (Fuel, Oil, water)

Yes, these fires were a surprise to everyone the way they developed. We almost never get Easterly winds. Usually they are Westerly off the ocean. So being very dry Easterly winds, the humidity levels were around 15-20% which makes for tinder box like brush & forests conditions coupled with fast moving explosive fires due to high winds.

My units are MEP-002a's so no fault lights and its an air/oil cooled unit. When I get more time to devote to troubleshooting I will run the unit some more & see if I can reproduce the problem. I have both a spare oil sender and temperature probe so if one of those turns out to be flakey I have the parts. Though it could be an intermittent 24dc connection somewhere that could cause it to just suddenly quit like it was shut down & then being able to start right back up and quit in 10 seconds and then not quit for over 15+ minutes. Fuel, oil and air are all good.

 

[Scoobyshep]

Tuesday morning got up and power was out. Went outside & nothing but thick acrid smoke in the air and could barely see an orange sun through smoke and there was black & grey ash coming down like light snow!

The reason for our local rural power outage is because our Utility Company around midnight Monday decided to shut down power pre-emptively due to high winds & low humidity in our area during RED alert fire conditions. Unfortunately, the Blue River fire (about 40 miles east of us) blew up overnight due to high winds & destroyed 100 buildings. News said to expect loss of life in that fast moving fire.

So, I fired up my #1 generator and life was "almost normal" considering the fire situation, and we were able to watch local news to keep tabs on the fires around us. However, about 5 hours later all of a sudden when I was outside about 75' away I heard gen #1 just quit like it was purposely shut down. Not a good sign! I went over and checked fuel, oil, batteries and all were good. I made a decision that since I have my backup generator #2 parked next to it I would now use it rather than trying to diagnose the problem on genset #1 and not have the house powered up. We really needed to be able to keep tabs on local news reports on area fast moving fires in these high wind low humidity conditions.

Once I got Gen #2 up & running and the house back online, I tried to start Gen #1 and it started right up but quit approximately 10 seconds later...hmmm. I then decided to try a 2nd start, so I could observe oil pressure and the stop solenoid as I expected genset to fail again. However, this time it started right up and proceeded to run 15+ minutes straight & might have run longer if I allowed it to run longer. Since I had house back online now using gen #2, next priority was to go down to barn to start #3 generator. We needed to fill up horse water using our 2nd well on separate electrical service entrance. Thankfully, #3 Genset started right up and has been running well all day keeping the horses & wife happy.

Unfortunately, due to more pressing matters I could not get back to troubleshooting gen #2 today as friends living 25 miles east of us had to evacuate their horses off their property and bring them over to our property which "for now" is a safe haven.

When I get some time I plan to get back to gen #1 to do some more troubleshooting.

Anyway, I experienced the 2 is 1, 1 is none rule firsthand. I feel fortunate that I chose to invest in having redundant backup gensets ready to roll!

Stay safe and remember the 6 Ps. Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance

 

[Chainbreaker]

Yep, filled the truck & its transfer tank with 65 gallons of diesel now onboard & our horse trailer is hitched and ready to move out if necessary. The thought of having a "bug out bag" ready to go has a new level of urgency, that's for sure! I think with our property being on West side of Eugene, OR we are going to be in the clear though after am updates.

Lots of people displaced from Blue River, OR and Vida, OR only escaped with shirts on their backs. They are now in emergency relief designated areas & are dependent on local donations for pillows, blankets, water, food etc.

The one fire in Blue river area expanded to over 110,000 acres and they only have 200 fire fighters working it. Said they need over a thousand + but resources are spread thin all over West Coast fighting large fires in WA, OR & CA.

The GOOD NEWS is wind is down and our neighborhood area utility power was restored at 9:30 am after crews verified no down lines, other areas still without power in more remote wooded areas. I'm glad to be back on utility power as I was getting a workout operating & maintaining 2 running generators 700' apart on our property with everything else going on and not much sleep due to keeping a nervous watch on developing fires in area. Yesterday evening we had a grass fire start up about 10 miles West of us but crews jumped on it and got it out. Weather is supposed to improve with a switch back to westerly winds around Thursday and potential for light rains early next week.

Anyway, I hope to soon get back to troubleshooting & giving Genset #1 a load test workout to see if I can replicate the shut-down problem I experienced yesterday.

 

[Guyfang]

We will keep you in mind! When you get some time, dig into #1.

 

[Ray70]

I would suggest to start with the temperature sensor and the air louvers. Make sure the louvers are opening correctly etc. The failure mode sounds like either over temp, faulty temp switch, or faulty oil pressure switch.
I'm leaning more towards the temp switch in your case.

 

[Guyfang]

Sounds like a good place to start. See if you can recreate the fault. If so, then start at the temp switch, or jump the whole safety chain, TB5-8 to TB5-9. Then run it. If it runs like a charm, and then you remove the jumper, and it dies, then it can only be S4 Temp, or S5 Oil Press.

 

[nextalcupfan]

This makes me appreciate the fault lights on the 80x series.

 

[Guyfang]

But more tech, means more problems and more cost. No reason you could not rig up some lights. Need to run some extra wire, use some cheap relays.

 

[Chainbreaker]

Had some time before it got dark so I decided to do some troubleshooting. Ray's suggestion above got me to thinking the unexpected shutdown just might have been due to an over temperature and here's why:

1. At the time of shutdown it was running the whole house & I was outside watering all the dry plants & trees closest to our house to try to get some moisture in them for fire preventative measures. Our 3/4 hp well pump was getting a workout due to all the water I was using. I could hear the generator pitch changing whenever well pump cut on along with the house load. Gen #1 was handling everything just fine, however after it shut down I noticed there was a lot of ash that had fallen on the generators trailer deck. That got me wondering if engine cooling was getting good unrestricted air flow...

Last evening with generator shut down. now that we are back on power, I went out and raised the "Close to Run" cover and visually inspected cylinder fins. There was a light coating of ash, not a lot but there was some. I also removed the shroud in the front of generator that covers blower wheel and oil cooler radiator. Once I got the cover off I brought up my air compressor from shop and blew out the oil cooler and cylinder fins. Some particles of dust & ash did come out but not what I consider a large amount. Since the generator is on its M116a trailer & protected with the OEM trailer cover top (all side curtains were fully raised) it shielded the generator from some of the still falling ash. However, there would obviously be ash laden air drawn into & around the generator. I also inspected air air filter that only had about 8 hours run time on it since its replacement. Amazingly the air cannister with its baffled plenum had not let in any ash that I could see and air filter looked pristine. I very lightly blew out the filter and nothing came off it that I noticed.

2. My next thought was that just before I fired up this generator due to this outage, I poured in a full 16 oz can of Seafoam in addition to the normal additive already in the tank (Optilube XPD cleaner with cetane boost) . I had not run any Seafoam in this engine for over 5 years & an all day run would be a good fuel system cleaning run. I only ran the generator on the day tank as I wanted the engine to run off the full strength of the Seafoam mixed fuel in that tank. The tank IIRC capacity is about 7 gallons. I keep the fuel level about 2" below the fuel cap rim, so I'm guessing the Seafoam mixed with ~6 gallons of fuel. Seafoam instructions say for "fuel maintenance" to run 1 oz per gallon & "2 ounces or more" for greater cleaning concentration. So...I am wondering if the Seafoam mixture along with the Optilube XPD might have caused the engine to run hotter than normal? If so, that coupled with the workout I was giving it at the time before it shut down after 5 hrs continuous running might have raised the engine temperature to the over temp sensor's trip point.

When I get time this afternoon I plan to load test generator using a 5000 watt garage heater and allow the Auxiliary fuel tank to refill the day tank with no seafoam mix fuel from onboard 50 gallon fuel tank. Depending if it will run for an hour under this load, or shut down again, that should help determine what to test or if I'm good, hopefully.

 

[Chainbreaker]

This afternoon I added more diesel fuel to dilute the remaining ~1/2 tank of Seafoam treated fuel and ran a load test. I started out with a 3000 watt load to get unit warmed up then stepped it up to 4000 watts and then ran for 1 full hour at 5000 watts with a nice balanced 240 V load running at 20 amps for each L1 & L3 legs. Unit ran nicely the full hour.



At the time of shutdown on Tuesday genset #1 was running the house plus well pump and possibly pulling an even a larger load than the load test I ran today. On Tuesday it was about 75F ambient temperature, the unit had some ash deposits on cylinder fins and oil cooler along with possibly running a hotter combustion temp due to a high concentration of Seafoam & normal Optilube XPD additive. I suspect it just may have reached the upper operating limit and tripped the thermal cut out. So, unless the unit has another shutdown with normal house loads, I'm satisfied that the over temp safety circuit did its job given the circumstances.

 

[CMPPhil]

This afternoon I added more diesel fuel to dilute the remaining ~1/2 tank of Seafoam treated fuel and ran a load test. I started out with a 3000 watt load to get unit warmed up then stepped it up to 4000 watts and then ran for 1 full hour at 5000 watts with a nice balanced 240 V load running at 20 amps for both L1 & L3 legs. Unit ran nicely the full hour.

View attachment 811685

At the time of shutdown on Tuesday genset #1 was running the house and possibly pulling an even a larger load than the load test I ran today. On Tuesday it was about 75F ambient temperature, the unit had some ash deposits on cylinder fins and oil cooler along with possibly running a hotter combustion temp due to a high concentration of Seafoam & normal Optilube XPD additive. I suspect it just may have reached the upper operating limit and tripped the thermal cut out. So, unless the unit has another shutdown with normal house loads, I'm satisfied that the over temp safety circuit did its job given the circumstances.

Hi

First best wishes to all in the fire areas.

Second, could the unexpected and unexplained shutdown come from a uneven leg load? I had to balance the 110 volt loads to keep my generator happy. Base 220 volt loads not a problem but lot of my 110 load was on one leg, not a problem for the utility, little moving of circuit breaker balanced the load.

My generators are smaller than yours so the problem shows up more quickly.

Cheers Phil

 

[Chainbreaker]

Yes, I had considered that the legs could become uneven. Actually with the way I have this generator's panel set up I do check the readouts on the 2 meters for L1 & L3 from time-to-time & I do see imbalances as various 120V loads kick in. I think as long as they are random and not long term sustained large imbalanced loads its ok. I have a 2000 Watt espresso machine that keeps its 6 liter boiler at a certain bar pressure and I do see a spike on that leg from time-to-time as the heating element in boiler kicks in but its not more than 20 seconds.

I don't think the engine would know to shut down from a sustained electrical imbalanced load though unless it somehow worked the engine harder to the point of overheating it. I think the generator's breaker would trip first to drop the load once that leg exceeded 26 amp for some amount of time. The MEP-002a generator is rated at 52 amps, 26 amps per leg. Also, I did think to feel the outside of the generator head about 5 minutes after it had shut down and it was relatively cool to the touch. The breaker was not tripped when engine shut down.

The low relative humidity was around 15 - 20% the day it shut down. Since its an air/oil cooled engine dependent on air flow that may have contributed to engine running hotter along with the concentrated dose of Seafoam (Seafoam contains Isopropanol). Higher moisture content air can absorb more heat than lower humidity air can. Also its my understanding that lower humidity air contains more oxygen molecules which can also contribute to higher combustion temperatures.

 

[nextalcupfan]

I feel you made a slight error on your max load.
If I remember right a 002 is 26 Amps as measured on the highest leg for single phase on 120v/240v.
3 phase is 17 Amps per leg.
Single 120V is 52 Amps

So if you're imbalanced and pulling 26 on L1 and 20 on L3 you're still at 100% load.

As a side note my 803a is very imbalanced when hooked to my house. I've seen 34A on L1 and 20 on L3 with 12A coming back on the neutral.

 

[Scoobyshep]

Yes, I had considered that the legs could become uneven. Actually with the way I have this generator's panel set up I do check the readouts on the 2 meters for L1 & L3 from time-to-time & I do see imbalances as various 110V loads kick in. I think as long as they are random and not long term sustained large imbalanced loads its ok. I have a 2000 Watt espresso machine that keeps its 6 liter boil at a certain bar pressure and I do see a spike on that leg from time to time as the heating element in boiler kicks in but its not more than 20 seconds.

I don't think the engine would know to shut down from a sustained electrical imbalanced load though unless it somehow worked the engine harder to the point of overheating it. I think the generator's breaker would trip first to drop the load once that leg exceeded 26 amp for some amount of time. The MEP-002a generator is rated at 52 amps, 26 amps per leg. Also I did think to feel the outside of the generator head about 5 minutes after it had shut down and it was relatively cool to the touch. The breaker was not tripped when engine shut down.

The low relative humidity was around 15 - 20% the day it shut down. Since its an air/oil cooled engine dependent on air flow that may have contributed to engine running hotter along with the concentrated dose of Seafoam (Seafoam contains Isopropanol). Higher moisture content air can absorb more heat than lower humidity air can. Also its my understanding that lower humidity air contains more oxygen molecules which can also contribute to higher combustion temperatures.

Imbalance shouldn't matter, as long as you dont exceed the maximum

 

[Chainbreaker]

I feel you made a slight error on your max load.
If I remember right a 002 is 26 Amps as measured on the highest leg for single phase on 120v/240v.
3 phase is 17 Amps per leg.
Single 120V is 52 Amps

So if you're imbalanced and pulling 26 on L1 and 20 on L3 you're still at 100% load.

As a side note my 803a is very imbalanced when hooked to my house. I've seen 34A on L1 and 20 on L3 with 12A coming back on the neutral.

You got me to wondering about electrical loads so I read through the very long but very informational sticky Mep-002a and -003a main breaker (same Circuit Interrupter breaker is used for -002a 5 kW & -003a 10 kW) and there is an Army spec that the Circuit Interrupter was spec'd at (Mil-G-52889/1C a PDF document attached in one of the posts) showing that the circuit interrupter breaker spec'd by the Army: "..SHALL NOT open at 110% rated set current and SHALL OPEN at 125% rated set current from between 1.5 and 20 minutes at ambient temperatures above 60 F and within 40 minutes below 60 F. The circuit interrupter shall open within .05 seconds under the conditions of a short circuit...".

So there is some leeway on exceeding 100% electrical load. Never-the-less, my genset shut down was an engine shutdown that I am 99% certain was due to thermal probe in head reading too high a temperature. Its possible the sensor on this 1986 genset could be out of spec and might need replacement but the limited load test I ran seems to indicate its at least OK for a 5000 watt resistive load for 1 hr.

I'm sure the heavy electrical load at the time, which was within electrical limits, contributed to an overheating condition along with the less than ideal environmental heat dissipation conditions plus the hotter burning diesel additives (Seafoam + Optilube XPD with cetane boost) the generator was running on at the time it shut down.

 

[Scoobyshep]

If it sounds like a controlled stop, it isnt a severe overload, those more or less drag the engine down.

 

[Chainbreaker]

If it sounds like a controlled stop, it isnt a severe overload, those more or less drag the engine down.

Just before it shut down I was outside about 75' away with my back towards it and it did not sound terribly labored at the time. Sounded like a normal load on engine when it shut down. But the well pump had been cycling on & off for over an hour plus as I watered outside with all normal house circuits on. So the engine pitch would change to a more throaty sound for a minute or so but never sounded like it was in any jeopardy of stalling out.

So yes, it sounded like it was switched off. Which is the way I would expect it to sound if the safety circuit intervened and shut it down.

I have experienced what it sounds like when overloaded as a few years back I was using our 5600 W house dryer as a load tester and the one circuit I did not switch off was the 3/4 HP well pump and it suddenly cut on and the genset grunted heavily and sounded labored like it could stall but did not. I expect a well running MEP-002a at my altitude (500') should be able to routinely pull 6kw and possibly more if worked up to a higher load depending on environmental conditions...cool winter day vs hot summer day.

 

[Scoobyshep]

So fun fact here, the limitations of a generator head (much like an electric motor) are mainly based on how much heat can be removed and keeping the windings below the damage temperature. We have a few motors at work that are rated at 2700 hp, but we are pushing about 4000 hp out of them because we force cold air through the motor to cool it.

Kinda off topic, just thought someone might find it amusing

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