20 KW Generator Questions

also depends if his septic is gravity fed or has a pump... kind of important to take a shower ...to have water ... hot water and septic at same time.. ask me how I know and if all girls go to same school they all use same time! seems crazy I know... I only use 300 kw a month! electric bill is normally $75 a month..... but 80% is used between 5 and 7 am and 6 to 8 PM... oh I got a buddy that got me a 60k watt generator for 279 he is delivering.. is it over kill yes ... but another tidbit is generators are not rated for continuous operation. ... need to be shut down and cool off.. why they are run in parallel... on further reflection maybe I am not best one to advise on this... I maybe too close to it... in short for city people on town water and sewer 5kw will get you by short term.... if you got a well septic a freezer and need you want close to 10k for short term outages.. for anything over a week 75 amps!

 

Auto generators require the highest load due to it being a hands off operation. Example: power goes out but a/c is on and can kick on and off even if your not home, is how it was explained to me, just like a water heater, you don't control what is on or off with an auto system, ifs its wired in it can be on, which is why its based on the highest possible load. But with a manual generator, you can turn those items off (you have to be there) or not wire them in.

I think that if you do get this pto gen, life during an outage would be more comfortable, you have and use the machines frequently, I assume you have fuel on the farm available. Bigger gens do cost more to run and that is the trade off for the convenience. During and extended outage things can add up, but multiple happy ladies in the house may be worth the cost of the diesel, and I think the drone of a tractor running is quieter than a peeved wife.

 

They are rated for surge and constant load...example, mine is 6250W surge and 5000W constant. It will run my household with no problem as long as people pay attention to what's on...it will even run the water heater. A good heavy duty generator (like this PTO powered one is very likely) will have a pretty high contestant load rating.
One trick is to pop the wires off the upper element on the water heater...it will recover slower, but it also uses half the wattage (roughly) helps leave available watts for something else...
Many older houses only had 60-80A services, so it can be done, just have to be careful...

 

Excellent point: I am on 'city water', meaning I am supplied with potable water from street mains and it requires zero electricity for me to have water. A friend of mine has an artesian well and a Honda generator, and he cannot use the 'idle- down' feature of the generator because it will not provide enough start-up current to start the well pump. So anyone on well water needs to throw that into the mix of 'required' electrical supply on a generator. I would probably up- rate my minimum generator requirements by 2K watts if I had a deep well myself.

As a general rule, I would agree with your 'go big or go home' idea but honestly, it costs a lot to buy the bigger generator, and then it costs more fuel to provide the same amount of power that a smaller generator would provide. If that does not make sense, maybe this will: if you need 10K watts now and then, but are generally using 3K to 5K watts, a 10K watt generator will use MORE fuel to provide that 3K to 5K watts when that is what you are using. So beyond the expenses of the outright cost of buying a larger generator, it costs more to make an equal amount of power when a smaller amount of power is needed. This not only affects costs to run the generator, it greatly affects run times for overnight runs when on generator power. I personally leave my generator running all night to provide power to the house and while the power requirements at, say, 2:00 AM are quite small, the smaller generator will use much less fuel to provide that minimal amount of power as compared with a much larger generator that is also providing a small amount of power.

And again, I am mot opposed to large generators, just pointing out that there are costs and down- sides to buying a larger generator than might be necessary. I believe a little bit of 'suffering' must be balanced against the bigger picture that most of the time grip power is available. Some others do not that that way and that is fine of course.

But the bottom line is that IMO, it does not take a huge generator to 'get by' for most folks with 100 amp or even 200 amp grid services. Then again, I am old and may think differently than some of the younger folks who do not want to be inconvenienced by a power outage and so require the larger generator supply to maintain their normal way of life.

Brian

 

Yes but most generators are making electricity by spinning magnet over a coil of copper wire... so after 4 days of constant use the connections ' get tired' yes it can be done,, but those 60 amp houses built in 60s still had wringer to hang clothes up AND were on city water and sewer etc etc... If you read US Army guidelines or Banks back up generators they have 2 a normal size and a smaller one while other is being maintained. ... once again I might be wrong person to speak...

 

BDF, I agree in fact harbor freight has a predator for less than 600 dollars about a 9kw generator would do most people fine in an emergency short term.. I had a newer 4kw that was over night and started 8kw in am but try to fill a portable generator at 430 in AM so its dark flashlight in mouth .. fill gas and oil .. then get motor to start when it' s15 degrees and motor is cold... to go to work ... really depends but I may still be to fresh of my memories

 

I've got a 6500 watt Honda genny out in the garage for emergencies. My Mrs and I went through the east coast blackout about...what was it....15 years ago now. Wow. Time flies. Anyway....she's a total city kid. Her concept of being prepared is having a few extra boxes of Kraft Dinner in the pantry. I maintain everything in the house for emergencies....power....water....food.....heat....everything. Fortunately, she isn't a needy high maintenance kind of person and will tough out whatever she needs to. The kids...they'll survive. LOL. As long as I can run a couple of fans to circulate heat, and a handful of lights, I'm good to go. Everything else in the house runs on gas or it's something we can do without.

 

Washer doesn't use much power...as for the dryer, in the summer they can hang out on the line, in the winter they can hang inside in the line next to the stove (or outside, some of the local Amish hang clothes out to dry year round)
My well is 110' deep, my 5KW genny has no problem running the pump...like I said before, just gotta pay attention to whats all on at one time...not the easiest thing with kids I know.
You are right about the connections though...full load for hours on end will tend to warm things up...
Fortunately I've never had to run solely on genny power for days on end...I'm sure by the end you would kill for a whole house NG genny!
Is this an old Winpower generator LodgedTree ? Those are heavy duty old units...I remember as a kid doing the milking and all the farm chores while being powered by a PTO driven Winpower genny...good old units...you see them at farm sales a lot around here...this looks just like dads old one...

 

Most generators are not meant for constant use "prime power", when you get into the diesels or higher end gas units is where you start seeing prime power use ratings. I would say most if not all the box store units are for emergency use, yes they can and will run for days or weeks, but don't be surprised if it grenades itself and the warranty won't cover it. I know in 98 we saw a lot of them die during the ice storm just from being ran so long, and that was two weeks.

A tractor is meant to run all day, it will turn that pto till it runs out of fuel/gas whether it is hot, cold, or raining. If you read the manual on most of the box store units, they say not to operate in adverse/inclement weather unprotected, which is funny because that's when you would need them.

Everybody's wants/needs are different. And if I was Canadian Border VT, I would get a nice unit after that experience.

Personally, I'm looking at a miller bobcat 250 efi, 12k surge 11k continuous. No carb to mess with, elec start, meant to run all day and I get a welder. Apparently there was an earth quake today, sooooo...maybe I get my welder.

 

It was 03 and I was on the bridge going back to a friends place from jones beach when that fiasco happened. Young me never having driven in a city before and then that, what a cluster, couldn't get outta there fast enough.

 

Got the older version of that machine. 10K & 8.5K continuous duty. Runs house & shop just fine. Hoist will make it bark just a bit, but compared to having to close up it's fine. Have run for 6 days steady on it. Good welder & genny.

 

I have not seen it yet so I am not sure of the brand, just that it is an old one, 20 KW/60 amp with no PTO shaft, or trailer or 3 point hitch carrier. (It is free though so I am not complaining).

I think these PTO generators are a bit different though because they were designed to run farms, at least back in the day. Every farm around here has one, and while they generally have bigger tractors then my bulldozer, I think...and I could be wrong...they are a bit more heavy duty then portable generators.

Interestingly you guys might have answered a question I never asked. I have another old generator kicking around...you would be surprised at what I have here...anyway it is a 1943 generator made for the US Army; self contained unit, gas/propane unit, 4 cylinder liquid cooled, 3 phase with single phase converter, but...only 3000 watt. (HUH???) This thing is a beast, yet it only puts out 3000 watts? I found it one day while looking for some scrap steel to make a reverser cooler mount for my bulldozer. I still have it, though it went on a wee bit of a diet in the steel dept as I really needed that reverser cooler installed on my dozer.

Myself I never had much interest in a back up generator like Generac after doing a little math. You guys have no idea how rural I am...a few more poles and the power lines stop, that is because there is no more houses and a lack of roads. My current logging twitch is a 1/2 mile , and my logging road extends a half mile in to the yard, a full mile back in the woods...so yeah there is miles here of nothing but woods and fields. So no natural gas at all, or city water. But I do have a 500 gallon propane tank, which sounds good until a person realizes how much propane a generac type stand by generator uses. On paper it does not seem bad, 3-4 gallons an hour as we all know propane kind of sucks for BTU's (91,000 vs 131,000 for diesel). So assuming the unit runs 24 hours a day, that is 96 gallons per day. At first it would seem it would run 5 days, but that is not quite true either. Propane has to have room to convert from liquid to gas in a tank, so it can only be filled to 75%, so in reality my 500 gallon propane tank is only 400 gallons, 4 days of power.

Assuming that it is full of propane that is. It is highly unlikely that it would be.

My propane provider will not automatic deliver, it must get below 1/2 a tank before it is worth it to come out here, so I might only have 2 days worth of back up power in the form of propane. But if the last wind storm was any indication, getting propane delivered in 2 days time when everyone else is screaming for propane just is not going to happen. In fact many back up generators here are hooked up to 100 gallon tanks, and I think, "Who did that calculation"? But that is propane and not Natural Gas, which of course makes more sense. I have never heard a back up alarm yet on a Natural Gas truck.

But now off-road diesel fuel, I got plenty of that kicking around, probably 1000 gallons at any one time. My bulldozer would use about 30 gallons a day so I think we would be okay for awhile.

 

Jeesh...I am horrible at updating my posts on here sometimes.

I got this generator home and have been working on the project on and off as I saw fit; mostly working on it when it was warm, and not at all during the cold snap.

In any case I got it home and it is a 20 KW/83 amp generator, so the amps are far more than I thought which is good. It had a few cosmetic issues, and lacked a pto shaft which was the biggest issue to overcome. The gear box on this generator has a smooth male shaft, woodruff key with roll pin hole at 1.125. A person cannot get a 1.125 pto shaft yolk.

The other issue was having something to mount it upon...

 

For the pto shaft, my local tractor dealership had a pto shaft with 6 splines on both ends for $140, so I bought that, with a spare yolk that was female for $40, but bored out to 1 inch. To get the 1.125 bore I needed, I took the yolk to a machine shop and had the guy turn it down to the bore I needed which cost a whopping $5. So price wise I am at $185; not bad considering. I swapped out the driveline yolks myself, drilled out for a bigger roll pin, and ground down the woodruff key; and thus had the shafting I needed.

 

The mounting of the generator was a different animal. I was going to mount it to a trailer I had kicking around (an old 4 foot woods trailer we no longer use), but realized I would need an 8 foot pto shaft it was set so far back from the hitch...no good.

So then I realized since I don't plan to move the generator much anyway, I could just mount the pto generator on a scoot. (also know as a sledge or dray). My thoughts were, this would not tie up a trailer, and should I have to move it, I can just pick it up and haul it around long distance with my log loader trailer, and short distances just drag it on its runners.

I had plenty of wood kicking around, so I built a scoot in fairly short order, setting up the drive line so it is very straight with no articulation. I did this by setting the generator on the sled off to the left to account for the gear box off-set on the generator itself, but also because a bulldozers pto shaft is off-set to the left from the center line of the hitch (at least on a John Deere 350D it is). The most challenging part was actually the movable hitch that is made of wood, but heavily braced and through bolted to take the strain. I also added a vertical rack that serves two purposes; to hold the heavy coil of cable that will plug into my house, and too mount a light over my generator set up so when it is running I can go check on my setup at night. I will just tap into the 120 volt outlet the generator has on the side of it to do that.

So I still got a few things left to do, but so far just have the money I got tied up in the pto shaft and yolks; just shy of $200.

1. Fabricate a hitch to go into my bulldozer hitch
2. Side brace the drawbar
3. Wire the unit directly so I can get a full 83 amps to the house
4. Paint everything

 

I have a whole home auto genny...16 kW. I don't have an elec hot water heater...it's done off either a propane boiler in summer or my OWB in winter, but I do have a well pump and every other normal appliance/lights you'd find in a 2400 sq ft home. As well as a chest freezer...we operate as normal during an outage, haven't had any issue with 16 kW being enough for the entire house.

 

I calculated it out as best I could, and with my Kubota I should be able to reach 14 KW or so, and with my Bulldozer easily get the 20 kw out of the generator.

I made significant progress today, I just need to paint the Scoot and Generator, then wire up a cord to plug it into my house.

 

Glad its working out for you LodgedTree when you can . That one should treat you right

 

The RPM is gonna be correct for this to work?

 

Yeah I owe you guys some pictures. Not sure I can convince Katie to pose in front of it in her Little Red Dress this time of year, but I have been putting it off hoping I can get a coat of paint on it first. I can't seem o locate a few quarts, so I'll have to buy some first.