Generators

kildare.17hmr

Iv been thinking about getting a small geni to keep in the garage for emergencies but have no clue what size to get. What would be recomended, something that eould keep the lights on in a blackout or keep the cooker ect workin if the power was off for a longer while.

Agent_47

I have an SDMO ranger (2.5 KW). Tried a 1 kw SDMO made in China and it would not power even a garden strimmer.

The Ranger on the other hand allows me use a Karchar power washer on sites. At home I have used it to test and support the following in the event of a power outage, Fridge (110w), Freezer(120w) and the oil central heating (800w). With that lot connected it also did a TV(150w) and a micro wave(800W)! That said it will use at least a litre of petrol every hour. Still its better for critical equipment to have a geny that can support a few items and a light bulb..

eth0

1 ring on the cooker uses about 2kw. really I wouldn't bother my arse trying to run a cooker off one, a cylinder of butane and an ould gas top that someone's looking to get rid of would do a much better job

There's loads of them for sale on adverts.ie, people buy them thinking they're going to use them and then don't and there's still some construction people getting rid of theirs from the boom

kildare.17hmr

If it was to be used for an extended period the freezer and fridge would only be ran for a couple of hours a day which would be enough to keep them cold, the rest would be lighting at night and cooker ect during the day. Do they use that much fuel yeah?? What power should i be looking at ya think? 2.5kw?

eth0

kildare.17hmr wrote: »

If it was to be used for an extended period the freezer and fridge would only be ran for a couple of hours a day which would be enough to keep them cold, the rest would be lighting at night and cooker ect during the day. Do they use that much fuel yeah?? What power should i be looking at ya think?

you could get away with 1kw then. so a honda EU10 or a similar knock-off like this one would do, these use less fuel than the ordinary generator set with the steel frame around it.

baords dyslexic

Would be good if Grizzly 45 could let us know how he's getting on with his Lidl genny he mentioned buying a while back

Grizzly 45

He can indeed!:D
TBH I'm not expecting to power my entire house with this or very much for along time.I'ts a lightweight machine thats fine for powering things like angle grinders,drills,concrete mixers off site around the estate where there is no power.It will handle all these tasks fine one at a time,but will trip out if any heavy drawing is put on it.That is usually the "power spike" of starting an electric motor.Be it a drill or your washing machine.Motors can really require alot of power to turn,and then very little to run when they are doing their task.
As well as being petrol powerd ,which is the worst choice of fuel for a backup system.Long term operating gennys should be diesel .As you really dont require a lot of RPMs to get power from a Genny a slow diesel is fine .
If I was going to use it in a short term power outage,[5 days max type affair]I'd use it to get up the fridge and freezer to freezing,for a couple of hours,then maybe,light,and possibly comms and if need be the central heating circulating pumps for hot water,or activate our well pump to fill up the storage tanks.It will handle all of those tasks one at the time,not everything at once.

Bottom line is its a lightweight machine for short term applications,not a long term solution to anything.
Were I ,and had the money,I'd look at integrating a big 50KWdiesel machine with Gen&welding capability into a wind/solar power battery bank and start looking at going independant.
But then 25K buys you alot of ESB power.:pac:

baords dyslexic

I'd be very wary of running anything with sensitive electonics like a computer from a generator unless I was 100% sure the power is well regulated, the reason is that computer PSU's are really cheap pieces of sh!t (even the expensive ones) that rely on having a stable input voltage to work.

My solution is to have a suitable UPS for the computer and power the UPS from the generator.

Years back I was on a call out to a computer job and arrived on site to see a couple of small (about 3KVA) generators running outside the building and smoke pouring from the window where the cables went in. Shortly after amid screems from inside a smoking computer was thrown out the window followed by another and two monitors. The funny part of the story is that the damage was the fault of the "Accountant" that ran the office, he didn't like the idea of people not doing any work when the power went off so borrowed the generators from the busnesses nearby farm and his money saving meaness cost the company 2 monitors and 2 computers plus a lot of engineer time to replace them. After the initial disaster he still wanted to plug in more to see if they would work:rolleyes:. Any decent 300VA UPS on each of the computers powered by the generator would have saved the day, give todays power hungy computers some would need a 500VA UPS. (UPS Uniteruptable Power Supply)

ShadowFox

As eth0 said 1 ring on your cooker is 2kw of power x4 8kw + fridge freezer tv microwave + lights charging your phone or batteries your looking at a 10 to 12kw generator which would use a hell of a lot of fuel. Ive a 2.2kw generator and thats mainly for my chest freezer fridge and charging phone and batteries that has a 7lt tank and you only get 7 hours max from the tank. Im looking into wind turbines and batteries costs more at the start but in the long term i cant see petrol prices going down any time soon