Gas Generator Recommendations

Talk about timing. Our power just went out 5 minutes ago. Got the EU2000i Honda up with one pull and now have both fridges, some lights, the DSL modem, outdoor fish pond pump, etc. up. I'll get the TV's going if this lasts too long.

Now we have no excuse for eating up the ice cream, though...

Ours

begreen said:

Our power is out. Fire is going, house is 72F, computer and modem are on UPS. They say it should be back on in 1.5 hrs. so we'll just ride it out unless the winds get worse and take out more lines.

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Ours just came back on. It was fairly local. It was about 2.5 or three hrs which is pretty typical around here for the usual tree vs power line thing. Ice cream is still hard and still there.

I think your wind speeds may have been greater than ours in Lewis Co. Early forecasts here were for 60mph gusts which worried me, but it never got near that. Could have been worse. When we were in Kirkland several years ago, our power was out for something like nine days as I recall (ice storms). That's when I started looking into the small gens. Now, and with propane for cooking, we could go for months.

begreen said:

Now I have a 2.4kW Yamaha converted to also burn propane and rewired the panel so that the key 110v loads I need powered (fridge and freezer and kitchen lights), are on the same leg of the panel.

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During this last outage (ours was about 6 hours) we ran the whole house for the first time with my 3200 watt inverter generator that only provides 120 volts. We backfeed the panel like you BG. I use an interlock. Rather than jack around with moving circuits I just backfed the whole panel with in-phase 120 volt juice and shut off the 240 breakers (though I could have left them on). It was the first test doing it this way instead of the old 240 genset that backfed power similar to line power.

Man that inverter genset makes good power. A solid 125 volts all the time, never varied as loads cycled. The eco throttle setting kept the genset noise very low and fuel was sipped. The power was so clean that my ceiling fan didn't even hum, it hums slightly on utility power. During an outage we are actually under higher quality electricity.

Oh and during the power outage I was able to list and sell my old generator. I figured that there would be demand and I was right! I'm all inverter now.

begreen said:

Yeah I need to clean up the old Coleman and sell it. It has less than 50 hrs on it. No need now with the inverter gen and RVgen as a backup. Heck I could put an inverter on the Volt and get another steady 1.2kW supply if I had to.

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I was looking for used volts this weekend too. Just about none for sale but the Nissan Leafs are freaking everywhere. Cheap too. I like the looks and choices of fuel with the volt. Been selling lots of stuff lately.

I've noticed at construction sites, the EU2000i's are extremely popular, and seem to get a lot of use. I see night road crews using them to power large halogen light kits all night long for weeks on end.

Then there's the folks with remote cabins who want to run a few appliances like this guy:
http://www.survivalistboards.com/sh...ef739286dfe0d38ff81218&p=5196223&postcount=10

It seems like it's hard to go wrong buying a Honda inverter generator.

iamlucky13 said:

I've noticed at construction sites, the EU2000i's are extremely popular, and seem to get a lot of use. I see night road crews using them to power large halogen light kits all night long for weeks on end.

Then there's the folks with remote cabins who want to run a few appliances like this guy:
http://www.survivalistboards.com/sh...ef739286dfe0d38ff81218&p=5196223&postcount=10

It seems like it's hard to go wrong buying a Honda inverter generator.

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I am in the construction industry and they use Honda 2000s because they are very portable, very quiet, and can run for the whole shift without gas. Night work is bad enough without extra noise complaints. The flaggers like to have a light on them at night. Funny how they always seem to be charging their phones with them.

iamlucky13 said:

Then there's the folks with remote cabins who want to run a few appliances like this guy:
http://www.survivalistboards.com/sh...ef739286dfe0d38ff81218&p=5196223&postcount=10

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Something like 19,000 hours? On the same spark plug? Yeah, I guess they're alright, alright.

Highbeam said:

During this last outage (ours was about 6 hours) we ran the whole house for the first time with my 3200 watt inverter generator that only provides 120 volts. We backfeed the panel like you BG. I use an interlock. Rather than jack around with moving circuits I just backfed the whole panel with in-phase 120 volt juice and shut off the 240 breakers (though I could have left them on). It was the first test doing it this way instead of the old 240 genset that backfed power similar to line power.

Man that inverter genset makes good power. A solid 125 volts all the time, never varied as loads cycled. The eco throttle setting kept the genset noise very low and fuel was sipped. The power was so clean that my ceiling fan didn't even hum, it hums slightly on utility power. During an outage we are actually under higher quality electricity.

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What do you have for an inverter genny exactly?

EDIT: I looked back in the thread. You mentioned Champion - is that what your inverter is? I wasn't really aware they made a 3200w, if so.

maple1 said:

What do you have for an inverter genny exactly?

EDIT: I looked back in the thread. You mentioned Champion - is that what your inverter is? I wasn't really aware they made a 3200w, if so.

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Yes, it's great. Not quite honda 3000 quiet but rated as quite as Hondas 3000 handi. I bought it from Costco online so it's the black one. Starts up the rv's air conditioner no problem when on low idle.

Highbeam said:

Yes, it's great. Not quite honda 3000 quiet but rated as quite as Hondas 3000 handi. I bought it from Costco online so it's the black one. Starts up the rv's air conditioner no problem when on low idle.

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This one?:

http://www.costco.ca/Champion-3100W-Inverter-Generator.product.100118537.html

Hadn't seen that before on our Costco site.

This is the one I got, locally (from the local building supply place that is great to deal with) on a 'tax free' sale. Got a decent deal & it works great, so far:

http://www.kingcanada.com/Products.htm?CD=417&ID=21934

Except for the battery it came with. I replaced that this winter, it was pretty well worthless right out of the box. The electric start is great. It's actually remote start but I haven't bothered with that.

I wasn't fussy about the name on the side, but from the looking I did, it seemed identical to the Lifan that HD sells. And Lifan seems to make decent stuff. After getting it home & going over it & using it, I couldn't see the Lifan name on it anywhere, but the name that was on it (far eastern but I forget now what it was) might be all part of the same company. I might have gone the Champion way if I had seen it at the time. I would love to have a Honda, but couldn't justify the 3x price tag.

maple1 said:

This one?:

http://www.costco.ca/Champion-3100W-Inverter-Generator.product.100118537.html

Hadn't seen that before on our Costco site.

This is the one I got, locally (from the local building supply place that is great to deal with) on a 'tax free' sale. Got a decent deal & it works great, so far:

http://www.kingcanada.com/Products.htm?CD=417&ID=21934

Except for the battery it came with. I replaced that this winter, it was pretty well worthless right out of the box. The electric start is great. It's actually remote start but I haven't bothered with that.

I wasn't fussy about the name on the side, but from the looking I did, it seemed identical to the Lifan that HD sells. And Lifan seems to make decent stuff. After getting it home & going over it & using it, I couldn't see the Lifan name on it anywhere, but the name that was on it (far eastern but I forget now what it was) might be all part of the same company. I might have gone the Champion way if I had seen it at the time. I would love to have a Honda, but couldn't justify the 3x price tag.

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Yes, the first one. It's been a great performer. The only issue has been rolling through soft gravel the wheels don't work well.

just purchased a champion dual fuel 7000/9000 @ costco while it was on sale for 599.00 got this one because it will run on propane (but at a lower wattage, 6300 running) and more importantly, to me, it has < 5% thd, I am still considering a power conditioner for the pellet stove and other electronics.. any reasonably priced suggestions or should I just go ahead with the genny straight up due to the low thd ? I have the panel wired with a 30 amp 240 volt inlet for the genny with a lockout for the breaker and the main 200 amp service breaker. I did notice when testing the genny set up to run the whole house, the led lights on a ceiling fan had a bit of a flicker to them that concerns me

This is a square wave generator. A sine wave generator is good for any electronics and is closer to what the power company puts out. Typically sine wave generators are inverter generators that make 12 volts but convert it to AC with more control of the output producing cleaner AC. HONDA I believe makes a 6-7k inverter generator. You get what you pay for. Honda is more fuel efficient and will end up saving you more money in the long run if that is factored in. They are typically quieter as well.

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TonyVideo said:

This is a square wave generator. A sine wave generator is good for any electronics and is closer to what the power company puts out. Typically sine wave generators are inverter generators that make 12 volts but convert it to AC with more control of the output producing cleaner AC. HONDA I believe makes a 6-7k inverter generator. You get what you pay for. Honda is more fuel efficient and will end up saving you more money in the long run if that is factored in. They are typically quieter as well.

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Not true. The RV folks are generally pretty wealthy and smart and love their champions and have put these non-inverter champions on scopes and found a very very nice sine wave output. My old 3500 watt champ really was quite good but a little too noisy.

I have an inverter champion now and it has better voltage regulation than the non-inverter champion that I used to have and that's a big benefit. Seems the 240 gensets are really weird in how they regulate voltage. They work by making sure that the sum of voltage on both legs is 240. When you backfeed your whole house you will be unevenly loading each leg of the 240 which has the annoying side effect of lowering the voltage in the heavily used leg and raising the voltage in the other. Keep an eye out for this. My refrigerator did not like voltages under 100. Perhaps newer champions have fixed this somehow.

The inverter set has very clean power and indeed my ceiling fan has zero hum. Even on utility power I can hear more hum.

Someday I may buy another champion, a big one, that can run my electric water heater so that during extended outages I can have a hot shower in the house rather than heading out to our RV that has a gas water heater.

Highbeam said:

Not true. The RV folks are generally pretty wealthy and smart and love their champions and have put these non-inverter champions on scopes and found a very very nice sine wave output. My old 3500 watt champ really was quite good but a little too noisy.

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It seems like gensets have come a long way from the early days. AVR (automatic voltage regulator) is pretty much the norm in the mid-range categories now, and decent harmonic distortion (<5%) is more common now. THD is the more important of the two as regards to modern electronically controlled appliances.

Most appliances and other power consuming devices are designed based on grid specifications which are quite good as regards to distortion, frequency stability, etc. If you are concerned about the health of your appliances on generator power, there really is no substitute for inverter technology. I'm not really too sure if the advertised specs for THD can be relied on long-term for non-inverter gensets, but the closer you can get to grid specs, the better.

begreen said:

LED lights can be fussy.

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LED replacement lamps is certainly a developing technology. I'm sure that things will sort themselves out over time, but flicker remains an issue, although apparent flicker depends a lot on the observer.

Also, current LEDs have their own harmonic distortion problems, especially when run on AC power because they have to convert to DC. Power Factor is an issue as well that diminishes the green factor somewhat.