eu2000i through southeast tornados

[meep]

Gave my eu2000 one heck of a workout over the past week. Our grid was down for 5 days, which was a very short period considering the damage. TVA and the local utilities deserve serious attaboy for the speed and finesse they have shown.

My poor little 2000i ran my fridge, neighbor's freezer, and 1/2 the 120V circuits in our home for 5 days. this covered a number of cfl lamps, a few fans, and the TV, of and on, as needed.

Overnight burn rate was 1 gallon to ten hours with fridges cycling normally and fans on in kids rooms. WOW. When I was only running it part-time, daytime rates during fridge recovery (both) was closer to 4-5 hrs per gallon. So... whether it was full-time or part-time, 3 gallons per day.

Nobody could hear it running--- neighbors came by trying to figure out how I had a table lamp glowing "without a genset"... they couldn't hear it.

It struggled when larger appliances (microwave) tried to run. Had to be dropped off of eco mode when that happened, until the load was stable, then set back to eco mode.

It threw so much heat that all the weeds behind the cooling exhaust died quickly....

While the 2000 was certainly at it's limits during surges, I appreciated its efficiency, as I didn't have to make repeated out-of-town fuel runs.

After 100 hours of use (some pre-storm) I dumped the oil. zero noticeable consumption, but it smelled strongly of fuel.

quite happy with the unit!

Meep

 

[eljefino]

Welcome back to the grid. Hope your town is doing well.

 

[Bill in Utah]

Good to hear!

It's nice to have something like that "just in case".

Take care and be safe!

Bill

 

[meep]

yes-- it made a huge difference with the kids-- and even for us-- being able to get decent sleep with airflow, and keeping foodstuffs stocked. I did not like the arrangement of cords everywhere, and would like a better solution. would LOVE to install a transfer switch at the breaker panel. THATs the way to do it. Never really gave it much thought before, but now I think I may look into it.

M

 

[daves87rs]

Nice...

 

[JHZR2]

Reminds me that I should put some fogging oil and an oil change in my Robin Subaru 1700 generator.

 

[engineerscott]

Originally Posted By: meep
Gave my eu2000 one heck of a workout over the past week. Our grid was down for 5 days, which was a very short period considering the damage.


You wouldn't be located in Madison country would you? I just went through the same deal. Considering the number of 500kV transmission line towers that were knocked down 5 days to recover power was very fast.

 

[Gene K]

I was one of the lucky ones in Morgan that was back up in 24 hours.

Im amazed how little coverage the SCRAMing of three Reactors got especially when they are the same design as the ones in Japan. Guess it isnt news when things work the way they are supposed to.

PS We have been going through 20,000 dollars a day worth of Diesel Fuel at work to run the Generators.

 

[eljefino]

Originally Posted By: meep
I did not like the arrangement of cords everywhere, and would like a better solution. would LOVE to install a transfer switch at the breaker panel. THATs the way to do it. Never really gave it much thought before, but now I think I may look into it.

M


That is the way to do it, but I know someone who gets by with a suicide plug (male on both ends) and the main breaker off. The name of the device says it all.

 

[meep]

Originally Posted By: engineerscott
Originally Posted By: meep
Gave my eu2000 one heck of a workout over the past week. Our grid was down for 5 days, which was a very short period considering the damage.


You wouldn't be located in Madison country would you? I just went through the same deal. Considering the number of 500kV transmission line towers that were knocked down 5 days to recover power was very fast.



Yes, madison co.. Good friend works for TVA. here are some specs. 151 HT towers fell. They had 4000 crewmen working 24 hour shifts, brought in from several neighboring states. food served on job sites. shift ends when someone asks for a break, sleeps for 4 hours, then gets back to it. They scavenged unused poles and towers from wherever they could... cut them down, moved them over, stood them up, welded what they could.

huntsville had 51 interconnects to the outside world. I believe all 51 fell. Once they had 8 up, the town started seeing power.

Browns Ferry Nuclear plant fell off the grid. It did not melt down

. (It's the same GE Gen 1 design that has been in the news from Japan). they expected that to take longer to wire back up, plus restart time.

power came to hospitals and nursing homes first. medical district and select gas stations next. then businesses, then residences.

Publix grocery stores were amazing. They trucked up generators from their HQ in birmingham and had the stores at 80% inventory within 5 days.

diesel gensets were tied to telco poles every few miles. cel service was quirky but surprisingly reliable and likely reduced the huge panic that would have followed, as people were able to quickly find loved ones. It also kept people from driving in desperation to check on family and friends.

News from TV and radio stations was poor, especially during the storm-- antennas getting knocked out. radios came back up quickly, tho many at reduced power. The local Christian station used volunteer 4x4 trucks and a scrounged genset at the transmitter tower to get back on the air.

Tyson chicken set up huge food lines south of here, pulling off a refrigerated trailer, cooking it, and handing it out (don't know if it was free or sold).

I'm trying to journal everything I witnessed. Maybe my kids might like it one day.

M

 

[engineerscott]

Yep, I live just outside of Huntsville, in fact just a couple of miles from where that EF5 went through the Anderson Hills subdivision (amongst other things, that tornado was on the ground for 132 miles and was 3/4 of a mile wide for most of it's track). The TVA and the local utilities did an amazing job considering all the damage that was done. In fact all of the feeder transmission lines into Madison county were knocked down. I really expected it to take in excess of a week to see major amounts of power come back. They were able to route some power in early using transmission lines that were not normally used to bring power into the county. These low capacity lines were able to bring in about 9 MW of power (1% of the county's normal load) and were used to power up the hospitals and get them off generators. Significant parts of Huntsville had power at the end of day 4 and by the end of day 5 I believe something in excess of 70% of the city had power.

Brown's Ferry Nuclear plant did shut down. When the transmission grid went down the plant went to generator power to power the cooling pumps and the reactor went into a shutdown mode in an uneventful manner. It will take several weeks at least to return the reactor to power generating status (this is normal whenever a reactor is shutdown).

I've lived in the Southeast for 46 years and have seen a lot of supercell storms that spawn tornadoes, but this one takes the cake. This was by far the worst tornado outbreak in my life (in both the number and size of tornadoes) and is one for the record books. The devastation is amazing. Whole areas that are nothing but home foundations and a few denuded trees, and it's like that for miles and miles.

It has been amazing to watch. Neighbors who still had homes standing in some sort of fashion started breaking out chainsaws and going through rubble searching for survivors within minutes after the worst tornadoes past. And the people coming in from outside the affected areas and outside the state have been most gratifying and appreciated.

 

[JTK]

Originally Posted By: meep


Overnight burn rate was 1 gallon to ten hours with fridges cycling normally and fans on in kids rooms. WOW. When I was only running it part-time, daytime rates during fridge recovery (both) was closer to 4-5 hrs per gallon. So... whether it was full-time or part-time, 3 gallons per day.


It threw so much heat that all the weeds behind the cooling exhaust died quickly....



That's the beauty of keeping a nice little ~2000 watt gen on hand. A 5gal can of gasoline can last you awhile if you just run necessities.

I hear you with the dead patch of weeds/grass. I've run my cheapy ~1750watt Coleman Powermate way out behind the garage towards the edge of our concrete patio. Not only will the exhaust blast kill everything w/in 5ft, the 4 rubber foot pucks leave 4 nice black marks vibrated into the concrete!

Joel

 

[engineerscott]

Originally Posted By: JTK

That's the beauty of keeping a nice little ~2000 watt gen on hand. A 5gal can of gasoline can last you awhile if you just run necessities.

I hear you with the dead patch of weeds/grass. I've run my cheapy ~1750watt Coleman Powermate way out behind the garage towards the edge of our concrete patio. Not only will the exhaust blast kill everything w/in 5ft, the 4 rubber foot pucks leave 4 nice black marks vibrated into the concrete!

Joel


I put a thick black rubber pad I bought at Tractor Supply between my generator and the concrete behind my back porch. It reduces vibration transmitted through the ground into the house and it prevents those black marks you're talking about. I think this rubber pad was sold to go in horse stalls but it works great for this application and it wasn't that expensive.

You're right about getting the minimal sized generator that will meet your needs with a little safety margin. A 6kW generator will burn more fuel making 2kW than a 2.5kW generator will making the same 2kW (significantly more actually). During our recent outage I had a neighbor that drove to another town and bought a 6.5kW generator when he heard the power might be out for a week. He was running at a little less than half rated power but he was having to make frequent trips to a gas station to keep it running. Given that our entire county was without power that meant a drive every day to the next county and a wait in line for gas. In an ice storm in out area you might not be able to get to a gas station for several days and would have to use whatever fuel you had on hand.

I'm actually eyeing a 800W continuous/900W peak generator that Harbor Freight sells as a add on to my 3.5kW/4kW main generator. I figure I could run a couple of lights and a small TV off that and recharge cell phones (and maybe even a small microwave with the other stuff off). That generator has a 2hp engine and only sips fuel. I could fire up my main gen every so often to run the fridge for a while then shut it off and use the small one for lights and TV. I suspect I could run at a very low consumption rate with that plan. And, if I got caught with very little fuel on hand and no way to replenish it for a while I'd just run off the little guy. The best thing is that Harbor Freight has coupons on that generator for $89 fairly frequently. At that price why not. And it would give me a little redundancy if the main gen went down or refused to crank.

 

[steve20]

funny you should mention that- the only OPE motor I ever blown was a 4hp Tec vintage 1970-shot it right thru the block. My dad aluminum welded the case and I was back in business

 

[eljefino]

Originally Posted By: engineerscott


I'm actually eyeing a 800W continuous/900W peak generator that Harbor Freight sells as a add on to my 3.5kW/4kW main generator. I figure I could run a couple of lights and a small TV off that and recharge cell phones (and maybe even a small microwave with the other stuff off). That generator has a 2hp engine and only sips fuel. I could fire up my main gen every so often to run the fridge for a while then shut it off and use the small one for lights and TV. I suspect I could run at a very low consumption rate with that plan. And, if I got caught with very little fuel on hand and no way to replenish it for a while I'd just run off the little guy. The best thing is that Harbor Freight has coupons on that generator for $89 fairly frequently. At that price why not. And it would give me a little redundancy if the main gen went down or refused to crank.



I have one. Oddly, they have similar ones at Cabelas and Autozone/Pepboys. Watch the flyers. Some have 12V out, the HF ones don't anymore.

Under light load it has to run 3600 RPM unlike an EU in eco-mode. Also being a 2-stroke a % of gas goes out the exhaust, unburnt.

A positive is how good a backup it is, and how if it "walks" you're only out $100.

I trick mine into starting my fridge by running a hair dryer on low (750 watts) so it goes full throttle, then killing it and plugging the fridge in at the same time. Once running, fridge happily chugs along on 230 watts.

I also have a monster generator but wanted something the wife could handle if I were at work.

 

[RF Overlord]

Originally Posted By: meep
would LOVE to install a transfer switch at the breaker panel. THATs the way to do it. Never really gave it much thought before, but now I think I may look into it.
Do it.

I bought this one to go with my Subaru 4300W "portable" generator. Easy to install...comes with everything you need and it's simple enough for anyone to transfer without having to be a certified engineer. $300

 

[meep]

I'll bet that 900W gennie might fire the fridge on its own. the running current is certainly low enough. Surge on my fridge didn't hit the 2kw too bad.

I was a little worried about the 2kw walking away-- I chained it up outside and let the neighbors keep it going when we left town for a planned sporting event. a hacksaw thru the plastic case would have been an easy move. BUT, we have insurance, and my wife was so happy about it I coulda prolly upgraded to a 3000eu.

With a suicide plug, I easily ran 3 ceiling fans, one fridge (plus neighbor's), indoor lighting (CFLs), attic fan, and small fans in house. It did load up at times and the 1 gallon fuel tank was a regular PITA, checked every 3-4 hours.

But I hated the suicide plug (I like that name).

So I think a careful user can get by on a small generator. It would have been different in the winter with no heat. It can run one space heater, that's it. But people can bundle up, too.

 

[meep]

Transfer Switch:

If I understand right, each circuit just has 2 connections to make, right? the load wire gets wire-nutted to one lead, and it's replaced at the breaker by another, right?

Assume there'd be a single common and a ground.

Is that it?

M

 

[RF Overlord]

meep, I'm not sure if I understand your question properly, but essentially that it.

You remove a circuit from its breaker in the main panel and wire-nut it to a new wire they give you. The other end of the new wire goes to a breaker in the transfer-switch panel. You do this for each circuit you want backed up.

The "main" breaker in the new panel gets fed from a 60 amp sub-panel breaker (user-supplied) you install in an empty slot in the original panel while the generator feed obviously comes from your gen.

The transfer switch panel runs those circuits you've selected as a "sub-panel" off your original panel. To run on generator, all you do is push the new "main/generator" breaker in the transfer switch panel one way or the other to run the circuits you've rewired. It sounds more complicated than it actually is...

Yes, there's a common neutral that ties into the main panel and a ground for the new panel as well. All necessary wiring, hardware, and a length of flexible duct are provided with the kit. All you need to purchase separately is the 60 amp "sub-panel" breaker mentioned above, and whatever wire you need to connect the switch to your generator.

I'll say it again...it's actually much less complicated than it sounds.

 

[meep]

RF-- I hear you... good explanation... exactly what I was trying to figure out.

Melikes. Time to start saving pennies!

Mike!!