Power out 10/27
Power out 10/27
Around 5:50am. Perfect timing actually. New generator running around 6:20am.
Re: Power out 10/27
I heard a tree crashing type noise before I got up and inspected my yard with my spotlight. Didn't see anything. Setup the generator and went back in the house. Fashioned my plywood covering to it with the same clamps that I used on my old generator. This has way more electronics than my old one so definitely want to keep at least the vertical falling water off of it. I extended one end over the control panel also, which is what I used to do on my old one.
Loads: Toaster oven, Keurig, dehumidifier, TV and some lights and stuff. This is about 57% loaded.
I also determined that even when eco mode is not on, it does still ramp up RPM a bit during more load. So eco mode just means it can ramp down more when there is no load I guess.
Saw a school bus stop in front of my house around 6:30am. She backed up the other way which sucked because it was dark. I went outside to inspect. Found this in front of my house on the other side of the street.
I cleared what I could and while I was doing that a van drove by. The bus seemed to be stopped at the nearest intersection and the van seemed to stop to tell them the path was clear. So the bus started heading my way again. She pulled up and opened the door. I said I just cleared that and you should be good but I have no idea about the rest of the road. As we were talking the radio said school was just canceled. She had at least one kid on the bus and had to go drop him off.
A bit later a neighbor texted that cars keep driving down past her house and turning around. So I headed out again to see what that was. Encountered this.
That would be above my pay grade so I didn't touch it. I did call National Grid and report this which was easy. Then I got back in the truck and decided to drive the rest of the neighborhood. I cleared a few items by hand including this big branch that fell in front of these people's house AGAIN. And this wire was on the ground, which it always is.
Finally got back home and ended up using my chainsaw to clear this the rest of the way. Got it stuck, too, because I cut from the wrong direction and it took me 5-10 mins to free it. But I got it cleared up at least. It was passable in one direction but it's a bit of a blind corner so now it's 2 way again. Of course there is that hard obstacle down the road fully stopping all traffic but I did my part.
Loads: Toaster oven, Keurig, dehumidifier, TV and some lights and stuff. This is about 57% loaded.
I also determined that even when eco mode is not on, it does still ramp up RPM a bit during more load. So eco mode just means it can ramp down more when there is no load I guess.
Saw a school bus stop in front of my house around 6:30am. She backed up the other way which sucked because it was dark. I went outside to inspect. Found this in front of my house on the other side of the street.
I cleared what I could and while I was doing that a van drove by. The bus seemed to be stopped at the nearest intersection and the van seemed to stop to tell them the path was clear. So the bus started heading my way again. She pulled up and opened the door. I said I just cleared that and you should be good but I have no idea about the rest of the road. As we were talking the radio said school was just canceled. She had at least one kid on the bus and had to go drop him off.
A bit later a neighbor texted that cars keep driving down past her house and turning around. So I headed out again to see what that was. Encountered this.
That would be above my pay grade so I didn't touch it. I did call National Grid and report this which was easy. Then I got back in the truck and decided to drive the rest of the neighborhood. I cleared a few items by hand including this big branch that fell in front of these people's house AGAIN. And this wire was on the ground, which it always is.
Finally got back home and ended up using my chainsaw to clear this the rest of the way. Got it stuck, too, because I cut from the wrong direction and it took me 5-10 mins to free it. But I got it cleared up at least. It was passable in one direction but it's a bit of a blind corner so now it's 2 way again. Of course there is that hard obstacle down the road fully stopping all traffic but I did my part.
Re: Power out 10/27
After 3 hours it shows 3/4 tank.
Re: Power out 10/27
At 7 hours shows half a tank. But I later learned this is definitely not accurate because of the way the float moves. It moves in an arc but fuel drops in a straight line. It's simple geometry, dear Watson.
8.5 hours, shows 1/4 tank.
9 hours, shows a little below 1/4 tank. Turns out 1/4 is basically where I should consider E and a little under 1/4 is nearly empty.
I say this because it lasted another 20 minutes or so and ran out. It looked pretty dry. I spent about 30 minutes checking the oil, filling it, looking at stuff or whatever. The oil level looked perfect which is nice.
I started it back up around 3:55pm. To experiment I had it on eco mode and flipped the generator breaker to the house like that. It picked up the load no issues at all. I did not disable a single breaker. Even left the dehumidifier on as I mentioned before.
So about 9h 20m on 4.2 gallons. That comes out to 0.45 gal/hr. Definitely higher than my earlier estimates. But lets look to the energy specs which is where things get more interesting. Or precise.
Here are the final energy usage specs per leg. Check out that load balancing!! That's impressive.
So total energy consumption is 14.48 kWh. I can do some things with this number. First, I can calculate the AVERAGE load. That comes out to 1.55 kW, or about 22% load. Obviously there were spikes and also times the load was less than this. That's how averages work. OK.
Assuming it used the full 4.2 gallons, and this gas cost me $3.309/gal, that means this energy cost $0.96/kWh. The grid electricity costs $0.22/kWh. That makes this particular tank of generator usage about 4.36x as expensive as grid power.
Digging into other specs, this generator is rated at 6.7 hrs at 50% load. The identical Champion 100520 is rated at 10.5 hours @ 25% load. I got about 9.3 hours @ 22% load. I blame the efficiency loss there on the times when it was using quite a bit more than this so overall this all tracks.
I wonder how much more efficient it can get at lower average loads. For example, a typical overnight average load could be down below 500W. It could probably run at about its lowest RPM at this output. That must be advantageous for efficiency.
Based on other comparisons I still think this is about 30% more efficient than a conventional 3600 rpm generator. For example, the Generac XG7000E is rated at 10 hours on 9 gallons at 50% load. That's 0.9 gal/hr. Mine is rated at 6.7 hours on 4.2 gallons @ 50% load. That's 0.63 gal/hr or exactly 30% more efficient. So this also tracks. However, at lighter loads, while both generators use less gas, I think mine will open the efficiency gap because the engine can idle down more and more the lower the demand is. So that 30% could turn into something higher. This is all good news of course.
https://www.generac.com/generaccorporat ... f?ext=.pdf
8.5 hours, shows 1/4 tank.
9 hours, shows a little below 1/4 tank. Turns out 1/4 is basically where I should consider E and a little under 1/4 is nearly empty.
I say this because it lasted another 20 minutes or so and ran out. It looked pretty dry. I spent about 30 minutes checking the oil, filling it, looking at stuff or whatever. The oil level looked perfect which is nice.
So about 9h 20m on 4.2 gallons. That comes out to 0.45 gal/hr. Definitely higher than my earlier estimates. But lets look to the energy specs which is where things get more interesting. Or precise.
Here are the final energy usage specs per leg. Check out that load balancing!! That's impressive.
So total energy consumption is 14.48 kWh. I can do some things with this number. First, I can calculate the AVERAGE load. That comes out to 1.55 kW, or about 22% load. Obviously there were spikes and also times the load was less than this. That's how averages work. OK.
Assuming it used the full 4.2 gallons, and this gas cost me $3.309/gal, that means this energy cost $0.96/kWh. The grid electricity costs $0.22/kWh. That makes this particular tank of generator usage about 4.36x as expensive as grid power.
Digging into other specs, this generator is rated at 6.7 hrs at 50% load. The identical Champion 100520 is rated at 10.5 hours @ 25% load. I got about 9.3 hours @ 22% load. I blame the efficiency loss there on the times when it was using quite a bit more than this so overall this all tracks.
I wonder how much more efficient it can get at lower average loads. For example, a typical overnight average load could be down below 500W. It could probably run at about its lowest RPM at this output. That must be advantageous for efficiency.
Based on other comparisons I still think this is about 30% more efficient than a conventional 3600 rpm generator. For example, the Generac XG7000E is rated at 10 hours on 9 gallons at 50% load. That's 0.9 gal/hr. Mine is rated at 6.7 hours on 4.2 gallons @ 50% load. That's 0.63 gal/hr or exactly 30% more efficient. So this also tracks. However, at lighter loads, while both generators use less gas, I think mine will open the efficiency gap because the engine can idle down more and more the lower the demand is. So that 30% could turn into something higher. This is all good news of course.
https://www.generac.com/generaccorporat ... f?ext=.pdf
Re: Power out 10/27
Comparing to the Honda EU2200i for a sec. Totally different beast. But let's compare.
https://powerequipment.honda.com/genera ... 200i#Specs
Honda claims 3.2 to 8.1 hours of runtime per 0.95 gallon tank. That's a range of 0.3 gal/hr at 1800W down to 0.12 gal/hr at 25% load which is 450W. OK.
One thing this shows is the two generators aren't as far apart as you'd expect if you are running the Honda flat out. 25% for me is 1750W or exactly Honda's max (close enough). There, the Honda claims 0.3 gal/hr. The Champion 100520 does provide a 25% load rating and as I said before that's 10.5 hours on 4.2 gallons or 0.4 gal/hr. That's 25% less, which is about the difference my generator is more efficient (at 1/2 load) than a conventional gen. So regardless of whether this is a "large" or "small" difference, that difference percentage is very similar. Kind of interesting. Of course at light loads the Honda sips fuel. The Honda can power a 450W load for 8.1 hours on 0.95 gallons of gas, which is 25% load. 450W load on my generator is 6%! I suspect it uses less fuel at 6% load than 25%. How much less? No clue. But I thought this was interesting.
https://powerequipment.honda.com/genera ... 200i#Specs
Honda claims 3.2 to 8.1 hours of runtime per 0.95 gallon tank. That's a range of 0.3 gal/hr at 1800W down to 0.12 gal/hr at 25% load which is 450W. OK.
One thing this shows is the two generators aren't as far apart as you'd expect if you are running the Honda flat out. 25% for me is 1750W or exactly Honda's max (close enough). There, the Honda claims 0.3 gal/hr. The Champion 100520 does provide a 25% load rating and as I said before that's 10.5 hours on 4.2 gallons or 0.4 gal/hr. That's 25% less, which is about the difference my generator is more efficient (at 1/2 load) than a conventional gen. So regardless of whether this is a "large" or "small" difference, that difference percentage is very similar. Kind of interesting. Of course at light loads the Honda sips fuel. The Honda can power a 450W load for 8.1 hours on 0.95 gallons of gas, which is 25% load. 450W load on my generator is 6%! I suspect it uses less fuel at 6% load than 25%. How much less? No clue. But I thought this was interesting.
Re: Power out 10/27
Power came back a little after the 24 hour mark. But I have some numbers to crunch.
First, I got up right at 5:20am to check the tank level as this was the 8 hour mark. This is what I saw.
I'm going to call this about half a tank but willing to round. So half a tank would be 2.1 and I'm willing to call it 2.25 used for 8 hours. So the consumption spec, including the extra 2 minutes, would be about 0.28 gal/hr. So my prediction was close. I estimated I'd use between 2 and 3 gallons all night and was hoping it would be closer to 2. It seems to have been. How about average load?
So over 8 hours and about 5 minutes, it used 3.48 kWh (works out to about $0.47/kWh or "only" 2.12x grid power cost - so efficient). This works out to an average load of 431W. Wow, that's close to my estimate of 450W. This works out to a 6% load, average, for the 8 hour overnight run. I should mention that at the 7.5 hour mark Jamie got up and started turning on lights and stuff (i.e. well pump), plus the furnace came on. Overall though I'd say this is a best case overnight scenario because I don't think the furnace ran at all other than when our programmable thermostat made the heat turn on first thing in the morning (we set it way back at night). But this is the full house load MINUS the dehumidifier which I did turn off at the breaker before bed. A colder night may have required the furnace. I have two refrigerators. Take that for what it's worth.
By the way, this extrapolates to a 15 hour runtime if I ran this tank dry at this load. That's pretty crazy on only 4.2 gallons.
I let it run another hour because I got back in bed. Here are the final specs before power came on and I shut it down.
So 9 hours. Tank definitely below half at this point and this last hour was definitely some increased loads. Actually I can do that math. The average load between hour 8 and 9 was about 900W or twice the overnight load. Still low though (12-13% of total capacity).
Final comparison to the Honda then. The Honda would have used about 0.95 gallons over this 8 hour run or about 0.12 gal/hr. I used an estimated 0.28 gal/hr which works out to about 2.4x the Honda fuel consumption. Put it in simple terms, the Honda would use "about a gallon" to get through a night. My generator uses 2.25, or an additional 1.3 gallons. You know what? That is really not bad at all considering it is a full size 7000W machine AND puts out pure sine just like the Honda. It would be cool to have a small one of course and the Chinese ones are pretty affordable. But from a strictly overnight perspective, on a multi-day outage, this means I will use an extra 1.3 gallons/night from not having a small inverter generator. Given that I have up to 23.25 gallons on hand, I feel like this is not a huge imposition.
Using the 30% rule between my generator and Bill's (again I think this is higher at light loads, this is for a 50% load which neither of our situations reflect), I will save about 6.6 gallons/day compared to Bill using a 24 hour duty cycle. Although, since actual loads will be much less than 50% sustained, the actual savings will be less. At 25% load, my savings might be more like 4.8 gallons/day over his setup. But even then, that MORE than makes up the fuel savings of not having a small inverter gen and saving one full 5 gal gas can per day is easy to visualize. I'm pretty pleased with this.
One final comparison case. Let's say Bill bought that Honda EU2200i and used it for the 8 hour overnight period, and his other generator for the other 16. Using 0.6 gal/hr for 16 day time hours (this is very reasonable since he claimed about 0.53 gal/hr for an entire 17 hour period which included a overnight period), that's 9.6 gallons. Add another 0.95 for the Honda to get you through one night and that's a total of 10.55 gallons.
I'll estimate mine at 0.45 gal/hr for day time use since that's the one data point I have on that and over 16 hours that's 7.2 gallons. Then add another 2.25 for overnight and that's a total of 9.45 gallons. So that means I would STILL use 1.1 gallons less per day even if Bill bought a Honda EU2200i for overnight use. I think this is also a conservative estimate (because I think I use more power on the generator than Bill does so normalizing for actual power use, the difference is likely larger) but willing to run with it. Very interesting.
For what it's worth that's comparing about $2400 worth of generators to my $811 generator, which means I could replace my generator THREE TIMES just to break even, and it would still be more fuel efficient overall. Now you can see why I was so excited for this deal.
First, I got up right at 5:20am to check the tank level as this was the 8 hour mark. This is what I saw.
I'm going to call this about half a tank but willing to round. So half a tank would be 2.1 and I'm willing to call it 2.25 used for 8 hours. So the consumption spec, including the extra 2 minutes, would be about 0.28 gal/hr. So my prediction was close. I estimated I'd use between 2 and 3 gallons all night and was hoping it would be closer to 2. It seems to have been. How about average load?
So over 8 hours and about 5 minutes, it used 3.48 kWh (works out to about $0.47/kWh or "only" 2.12x grid power cost - so efficient). This works out to an average load of 431W. Wow, that's close to my estimate of 450W. This works out to a 6% load, average, for the 8 hour overnight run. I should mention that at the 7.5 hour mark Jamie got up and started turning on lights and stuff (i.e. well pump), plus the furnace came on. Overall though I'd say this is a best case overnight scenario because I don't think the furnace ran at all other than when our programmable thermostat made the heat turn on first thing in the morning (we set it way back at night). But this is the full house load MINUS the dehumidifier which I did turn off at the breaker before bed. A colder night may have required the furnace. I have two refrigerators. Take that for what it's worth.
By the way, this extrapolates to a 15 hour runtime if I ran this tank dry at this load. That's pretty crazy on only 4.2 gallons.
I let it run another hour because I got back in bed. Here are the final specs before power came on and I shut it down.
So 9 hours. Tank definitely below half at this point and this last hour was definitely some increased loads. Actually I can do that math. The average load between hour 8 and 9 was about 900W or twice the overnight load. Still low though (12-13% of total capacity).
Final comparison to the Honda then. The Honda would have used about 0.95 gallons over this 8 hour run or about 0.12 gal/hr. I used an estimated 0.28 gal/hr which works out to about 2.4x the Honda fuel consumption. Put it in simple terms, the Honda would use "about a gallon" to get through a night. My generator uses 2.25, or an additional 1.3 gallons. You know what? That is really not bad at all considering it is a full size 7000W machine AND puts out pure sine just like the Honda. It would be cool to have a small one of course and the Chinese ones are pretty affordable. But from a strictly overnight perspective, on a multi-day outage, this means I will use an extra 1.3 gallons/night from not having a small inverter generator. Given that I have up to 23.25 gallons on hand, I feel like this is not a huge imposition.
Using the 30% rule between my generator and Bill's (again I think this is higher at light loads, this is for a 50% load which neither of our situations reflect), I will save about 6.6 gallons/day compared to Bill using a 24 hour duty cycle. Although, since actual loads will be much less than 50% sustained, the actual savings will be less. At 25% load, my savings might be more like 4.8 gallons/day over his setup. But even then, that MORE than makes up the fuel savings of not having a small inverter gen and saving one full 5 gal gas can per day is easy to visualize. I'm pretty pleased with this.
One final comparison case. Let's say Bill bought that Honda EU2200i and used it for the 8 hour overnight period, and his other generator for the other 16. Using 0.6 gal/hr for 16 day time hours (this is very reasonable since he claimed about 0.53 gal/hr for an entire 17 hour period which included a overnight period), that's 9.6 gallons. Add another 0.95 for the Honda to get you through one night and that's a total of 10.55 gallons.
I'll estimate mine at 0.45 gal/hr for day time use since that's the one data point I have on that and over 16 hours that's 7.2 gallons. Then add another 2.25 for overnight and that's a total of 9.45 gallons. So that means I would STILL use 1.1 gallons less per day even if Bill bought a Honda EU2200i for overnight use. I think this is also a conservative estimate (because I think I use more power on the generator than Bill does so normalizing for actual power use, the difference is likely larger) but willing to run with it. Very interesting.
For what it's worth that's comparing about $2400 worth of generators to my $811 generator, which means I could replace my generator THREE TIMES just to break even, and it would still be more fuel efficient overall. Now you can see why I was so excited for this deal.
Re: Power out 10/27
I was looking back at my gas gauge status pictures I was taking. I missed a key one. Here it is at the 5 hour mark.
I'll be damned if that doesn't look EXACTLY like the gauge at the 8 hour mark in the morning after running overnight. In both cases the needle is split perfectly between the 3/4 mark and 1/2 mark. Well, the 5 hour mark was 53.5% of my total run time before it ran out of gas. Half a tank should be 2.1 gallons. But I was 53.5% (rounded) through the run time. No I can't adjust for load but you'll never guess what 53.571428571428571428571428571429% of 4.2 gallons is. It's exactly 2.25 gallons. Like 2.2500000000000000 repeating. That's pretty awesome. My estimating skills are impressive but I am sure the next thing I estimate will be terrible.
I feel pretty good about my calculations now.
I'll be damned if that doesn't look EXACTLY like the gauge at the 8 hour mark in the morning after running overnight. In both cases the needle is split perfectly between the 3/4 mark and 1/2 mark. Well, the 5 hour mark was 53.5% of my total run time before it ran out of gas. Half a tank should be 2.1 gallons. But I was 53.5% (rounded) through the run time. No I can't adjust for load but you'll never guess what 53.571428571428571428571428571429% of 4.2 gallons is. It's exactly 2.25 gallons. Like 2.2500000000000000 repeating. That's pretty awesome. My estimating skills are impressive but I am sure the next thing I estimate will be terrible.
I feel pretty good about my calculations now.
Re: Power out 10/27
Moreover, I could easily conserve that 1.3 gallons by shutting off the generator for about 3 hours during the day, a very easy thing to do. Then I can apply that savings to running overnight, if that was my priority. In a real limited fuel supply situation I would run it even far less than that. Really an hour every 4 or 5 hours is probably all that is needed. I should be able to get my daily fuel usage down from a little under 10 gallons/day to more like 2.5 or perhaps 3 or 4 being a little less crazy. That would extend my fuel supply from a theoretical ~2-2.5 days (that's 24 hours a day) to something approaching 5.5 to 9.5 days if I conserved from the very beginning of the outage. The scary thing is the situation where you'd be out for multiple days MAY coincide with a situation where you also cannot buy gas easily. The only exception would be if something very local happened to your street or property that took an extra week to fix vs the rest of the area. Then you can just go buy gas and deal with the outage. But if it's a major thing, 2-2.5 days may not cut it. Our outages seem to range from 24-48. I will also say that by the 48 hour mark being able to buy gas is usually pretty easy so that makes me feel better.kevm14 wrote: ↑Thu Oct 28, 2021 5:35 am Final comparison to the Honda then. The Honda would have used about 0.95 gallons over this 8 hour run or about 0.12 gal/hr. I used an estimated 0.28 gal/hr which works out to about 2.4x the Honda fuel consumption. Put it in simple terms, the Honda would use "about a gallon" to get through a night. My generator uses 2.25, or an additional 1.3 gallons. You know what? That is really not bad at all considering it is a full size 7000W machine AND puts out pure sine just like the Honda. It would be cool to have a small one of course and the Chinese ones are pretty affordable. But from a strictly overnight perspective, on a multi-day outage, this means I will use an extra 1.3 gallons/night from not having a small inverter generator. Given that I have up to 23.25 gallons on hand, I feel like this is not a huge imposition.