Which One is Best, MEP 4 or 5?

[turbo15479]

I have a MEP-005A and was told on this site it may be too much to run one house. I have a chance to trade for a MEP-004A but I am not sure this would run everything. I know military generators are able to handle extra load for quite some time but here is what I would be running. In the summer 4 ton air conditioner, 220 volt water pump, 220 volt stove, and lights, television, etc. Does anyone know or think a MEP-004A could handle it? It would be converted to single phase. Thanks, Bruce

 

[Isaac-1]

The likely potential problem here is the electric stove, with all the burners and the oven turned on at once it may draw close to 10KW by itself. Which is likely as much or more than everything else put together, the question then becomes do you really need to be able to cook Thanksgiving dinner while on generator power. As well as if you have an electric stove do you also have an electric water heater?

 

[panic_button]

My MEP-003 runs my whole house (all electric 3000 sq ft). I have a 5 ton heat pump & Hybrid hot water heater. There is some load management but if it's summer time we don't use the range/oven and do not use the dryer while on gen power. With everything on in the house beside range/dryer & AC running I'm pulling 30A per leg.

 

[Coffey1]

You need to manage the load odds are not everything will no on at same time.
If all loads were on it should be short term as some loads don't run very long.

 

[Ratch]

I've considered an 004 to run my whole house, but I get by with an 002 and minor load management so well, that I don't think I'll ever even go up to 003.
I'd think an 005 is way overkill and you're burning more fuel to keep it running than to keep the lights on. If you can trade for an 004, you'll at least save a couple bucks on fuel. Personally, with the HVAC and zero load management, I probably wouldn't go smaller than an 004. And that would be just so my wife can run anything she wants without thinking about it.

As it is, when my house is on generator, we run no tv's (this is more psychology for the kids than loading), no electric dryer, and no oven. Everything else is fine, although I'm going to build a preference circuit to alternate the 240v well pump with the 4500watt water heater. Though both will run on the genset, it's not necessary and will spare the loading.

 

[ETN550]

The 004 is only a 3 phase machine. It can be reconfigured for single phase but requires reworking the gages for correct reading of load and reworking the breakers. Normally output is derated for this conversion but, possibly, there is enough beef in the windings to carry the same 15kw rating on single phase. Because single phase was not offered on these machines we really don't know for sure what the rating would be.

Those that advertise these machines as running a house on 2 of the 3 phases are not considering the rating would then be 10kw or less and the balance between phases would be very poor.

 

[PeterD]

I have an all electric home too (but no A/C) including electric heat. It is virtually impossible to get my 004 up to full load no matter what I do. A stove typically draws about 5 KW in normal operation (say the oven and a single burner, or two burners) the pump is probably about 1 KW or so running, and you can practice load management easily regardless. There is a good thread on converting the 004 to single phase here as well.

 

[turbo15479]

Thanks for all the responses. When coverting to single phase I followed the directions of the video on You Tube which was posted by a member (I think) of this group. That person thought the generator would not lose vey much by the conversion and would probably still be 14 kw plus after the conversion. This has nothing to do with my first question but I see someone is selling a circuit board on Ebay that claims will convert these over to automatic start and just wondered if anyone had any experience with this. Not only would it need to start the generator but it would need to work with an ATS to make it completly automatic. Bruce

 

[Isaac-1]

There is a discussion of their MEP-002a / MEP-003a circuit board, I don't know if the MEP-004a / MEP-005a board is the same or not. In the case of the one covered in the discussion it functions as a basic auto start controller that drops in, in place of the standard control board. There are many retrofit generator control systems out there on the market, the advantage of this one is mainly that it is a direct drop in replacement. It will accept a standard start / stop signal from any modern non proprietary ATS's,(be aware most Generac brand consumer and low end commercial ATS's are basically brain dead and are just a set of contractors in a box that rely on the generator controller for all their intelligence) my only real complaint about it is that it does not have a cycle cranker feature, if the generator fails to start on the first attempt it give up, and you have to power cycle to controller to get it to come back to life.