Just after midnight-thirty Monday morning, a powerful storm packing heavy rain and high winds rolled through, leaving over 100K people without power in our small state. Fired up the beast, transferred the load over, and went back to bed. Power was restored yesterday just after 1 in the afternoon, so all told she ran for 85 hours or so.
Burned through 30 gallons of fresh fuel from the gas station, so she was pretty lightly loaded. Because of that, I borrowed a 100kw load bank from a friend to blow out the carbon bits and prevent wetstacking over the long term. Put the machine in 3-phase mode and am letting it run for a good 5 - 6 hours to ensure she is nice and clean inside. I paid a pretty good price for this and want to ensure that it will last my lifetime, with proper maintenance.
https://youtu.be/OsiTai3IRlI
At one point I put 15KW on it all at once (32 amps x 208 volts x sqrt3)/0.8 pF all at once and it didn't even blink. Expected some heavy black some and soot to go flying - nope, about a 1/2 second slowdown and frequency drooped to about 59.2 Hz. What a hacker.
Some lessons learned:
1 - Don't procrastinate about cleaning the hard varnish off the bottom of the fuel filler screen. It was causing the fuel to go in so slowly that it would cause me to overflow the filler neck and spill fuel on the ground. Not good considering we are on a well. Ended up poking a few holes through the screen and am in the process of finding another one.
2 - I have a sticky really in the start circuit. Works fine in Prime/Run, but go to start and sometimes nothing, sometimes a couple clicks, sometimes it starts. Had this same issue when I first bought it two years ago but disappeared after I got her up and running, seems it's back. Will troubleshoot when our refueling outage at work is over and I'm no longer working 72 hour weeks.
3 - I need to add more load to prevent long term wetstacking. Going to add in the dishwasher, washer, dryer, and electric oven (dual fuel, has gas burners). Already have two 2.5T heat pumps, well pump, refrigerator, and all the lighting that I need.
Some positives:
1 - My bride no longer b!tches about the price paid. She was extremely happy to have heat, hot water, lights, ability to cook (gas burners as mentioned above), lights, etc.
2 - I finally have over 100 hours on her and can change out the break in oil.
3 - I now have first hand experience that this machine can be relied upon to provide reliable power in an extended outage.
Burned through 30 gallons of fresh fuel from the gas station, so she was pretty lightly loaded. Because of that, I borrowed a 100kw load bank from a friend to blow out the carbon bits and prevent wetstacking over the long term. Put the machine in 3-phase mode and am letting it run for a good 5 - 6 hours to ensure she is nice and clean inside. I paid a pretty good price for this and want to ensure that it will last my lifetime, with proper maintenance.
https://youtu.be/OsiTai3IRlI
At one point I put 15KW on it all at once (32 amps x 208 volts x sqrt3)/0.8 pF all at once and it didn't even blink. Expected some heavy black some and soot to go flying - nope, about a 1/2 second slowdown and frequency drooped to about 59.2 Hz. What a hacker.
Some lessons learned:
1 - Don't procrastinate about cleaning the hard varnish off the bottom of the fuel filler screen. It was causing the fuel to go in so slowly that it would cause me to overflow the filler neck and spill fuel on the ground. Not good considering we are on a well. Ended up poking a few holes through the screen and am in the process of finding another one.
2 - I have a sticky really in the start circuit. Works fine in Prime/Run, but go to start and sometimes nothing, sometimes a couple clicks, sometimes it starts. Had this same issue when I first bought it two years ago but disappeared after I got her up and running, seems it's back. Will troubleshoot when our refueling outage at work is over and I'm no longer working 72 hour weeks.
3 - I need to add more load to prevent long term wetstacking. Going to add in the dishwasher, washer, dryer, and electric oven (dual fuel, has gas burners). Already have two 2.5T heat pumps, well pump, refrigerator, and all the lighting that I need.
Some positives:
1 - My bride no longer b!tches about the price paid. She was extremely happy to have heat, hot water, lights, ability to cook (gas burners as mentioned above), lights, etc.
2 - I finally have over 100 hours on her and can change out the break in oil.
3 - I now have first hand experience that this machine can be relied upon to provide reliable power in an extended outage.
