On Sun, 1 Oct 2017 07:13:34 -0400, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:

On 9/30/2017 9:40 PM, wrote:
On Sat, 30 Sep 2017 21:16:30 -0400,
wrote:

On Sat, 30 Sep 2017 20:54:56 -0400, wrote:

I dragged out Wayne's scope and a few meters to debunk a myth about
propane.
Someone was trying to tell me the output was less on propane than on
gasoline. I will admit it uses about 50% more by volume but for the
same output.
I used my convection oven for a load and that ended up being 5403
watts or around 98% of the rated output of the generator, a pretty
good test.
The wave form ended up being pretty "siney" although not perfect and
did not change with the fuel
http://gfretwell.com/propane%20project/Wave%20form.jpg
The rest of the test looked the same too.
http://gfretwell.com/propane%20project/On%20propane.jpg

I have that scope ready to go any time you want to drive to Estero
Wayne. For being 50 years old, it is still working pretty good.



===

Great, thanks. I'll be in touch via EMAIL.

It might be worthwhile to repeat that waveform analysis with a heavily
inductive load. I say that from personal experience with the 8 KW
Kohler genset on my old Bertram 33. That generator worked fine with
all loads except the Heart Interface Inverter/Charger. The charger
was heavily inductive as it approached full output and it would
severely distort the sine wave to the point that the charger would cut
back its' output, even though the load was theoretically well within
the generator's rating. Of course that resulted in a vicious circle
feeedback loop which was bad for all concerned. The inverter charger
that I have now is supposed to be power factor corrected and has never
caused any similar problem.

I am not sure what I have that fits that bill. I suppose big motors or
something may be fairly inductive. I did not notice any problems with
my PCs, TVs etc.
I did figure out the generator seems to be set up for 115/230 because
it was pretty stable at that voltage but by the time it got to the
kitchen fridge that ended up being more like 109 and it is slow
starting. I know I drop about 2.5-3v in the feeder from the generator
to the panel and that is my bad. There are probably some other losses
in the system too. I used #10/3 Romex and I would have done better to
use bigger wire. I have 50' of 6/4 SO cord that I used twice in 45
years as an extension cord for my welder. I may re purpose that, see
what else I have in the shed or I may just buy new THHN #8 or 6.
If I can just goose up the voltage a bit I doubt I will do anything.
Henc gave me a variac before he left and I might just put that on the
kitchen fridge. The one out in the tiki bar seems OK as does
everything else.


Probably not an issue in your case but in large electrical usage
facilities the growing use of switching power supplies for computers and
other devices adds to power correction issues. The switching power
supplies apparently look like an inductive load and when there are many
of them, it becomes an issue.


That usually shows up in modular cubical units with built in power
strips. The connectors burn up. It is most pronounced when you have 3
phase wye service and the triplin harmonic gangs up on the neutral. It
can also show up on 277v lighting circuits with solid state ballasts.
Companies like AFC make "super neutral" cable to beef up that neutral
conductor. IBM avoided most of these problems by not even bringing a
neutral conductor into a computer room. They used that extra conductor
as the "isolated ground" until some time in the late 70s when they
figured out it was a waste of wire. Unfortunately the myth still
survives today that IG is valuable or that IBM somehow required it.
They still had a picture of an IG in the physical planning manual but
if you actually read the text, there was not even a suggestion that
people install it. I heard it explained that they just kept the
picture there for people using 4 wire cable for single phase feeders
since we still avoided using a neutral because of the harmonics issue.
Most wiring was wire in pipe so you could just omit that extra wire.