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MEP 831A getting used

DeadParrot

Active member
213
47
28
Location
oklahoma city, ok
An October ice storm moved through Oklahoma starting yesterday(Oct 26). My MEP-831A got put in service today when the power went out. Picked it up when I bought a rural place three years ago. This unit was one of the last sold out of the OKC GL location. I wanted a diesel generator because the place came with a diesel tractor and associated ~200 gallon fuel storage tank. The generator is doing a good job of running a refrigerator, freezer in the shop building, TV setup, computer, a few LED lamps and a heater. And enough capacity left over to also run a small convection oven.

Current setup involves a heavy duty 120V cord and a bunch of extension cords. I had already contacted an electrician about a pole mounted manual transfer switch but this is 2020 and things can't be that simple. At least I had done a test run just a couple days ago when the weather was nice, warm and dry. A pair of 'milk shed' heaters make a good load bank for a 3kw unit.

The red and green thing is a re-purposed 6 gallon boat gas tank setup as an aux tank. The silver metal box holds a pair of lawn tractor type batteries as that was a low cost way to get a 24V battery setup. Each was $30 from SamsClub with core trade.

The evening(Oct 27) newscast said there are about 227,000 customers without power so it may take them a few days to get things back to normal. This figure was for OG&E. Doesn't include the rural electric coops which is what I am on. They did mention power crews from many surrounding states arriving to help. I included a couple of pics of the ice on bushes and trees.
 

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MrShawn305

Active member
168
98
28
Location
El Paso, TX
An October ice storm moved through Oklahoma starting yesterday(Oct 26). My MEP-831A got put in service today when the power went out. Picked it up when I bought a rural place three years ago. This unit was one of the last sold out of the OKC GL location. I wanted a diesel generator because the place came with a diesel tractor and associated ~200 gallon fuel storage tank. The generator is doing a good job of running a refrigerator, freezer in the shop building, TV setup, computer, a few LED lamps and a heater. And enough capacity left over to also run a small convection oven.

Current setup involves a heavy duty 120V cord and a bunch of extension cords. I had already contacted an electrician about a pole mounted manual transfer switch but this is 2020 and things can't be that simple. At least I had done a test run just a couple days ago when the weather was nice, warm and dry. A pair of 'milk shed' heaters make a good load bank for a 3kw unit.

The red and green thing is a re-purposed 6 gallon boat gas tank setup as an aux tank. The silver metal box holds a pair of lawn tractor type batteries as that was a low cost way to get a 24V battery setup. Each was $30 from SamsClub with core trade.

The evening(Oct 27) newscast said there are about 227,000 customers without power so it may take them a few days to get things back to normal. This figure was for OG&E. Doesn't include the rural electric coops which is what I am on. They did mention power crews from many surrounding states arriving to help. I included a couple of pics of the ice on bushes and trees.
Looks like you're only about 50% load! Looks good to me, obviously that will spike with the convection oven. A good idea to use that whenever possible to keep the wet stacking down, though I doubt you'll have much of an issue with that. What's your fuel consumption like so far? Sure is nice knowing you don't have to worry about the creature comforts during an outage huh ;)
 

DeadParrot

Active member
213
47
28
Location
oklahoma city, ok
Looks like you're only about 50% load! Looks good to me, obviously that will spike with the convection oven. A good idea to use that whenever possible to keep the wet stacking down, though I doubt you'll have much of an issue with that. What's your fuel consumption like so far? Sure is nice knowing you don't have to worry about the creature comforts during an outage huh ;)
Even with the convection oven running, never got over about 2.5Kw. Modern electronics and applinances are pretty low power. Fuel consuption was pretty light. The Coop had the power back on later that evening. That avoided having to find out if the generator would run the well pump as I still had water in the pressure tank. The pump is on a 20amp breaker so it is possible that the 831 might run it.

For this temp setup, I had the 831 in 120V mode to have one pool of 31amps verus two pools of 16 amps you get on the 240 setting.

Sounds like you have been bitten by the Green Iron bug!
Yep. Have an M1101 and M101A1 trailer, a former FD CUCV plus a bunch of tools and stuff purchased from both the GL auction site and the retail store they had in OKC.
 
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