OT: generator for ice storm

[Oren Beck]

Duane Attaway wrote:
> On Tue, 4 Jan 2005, Brad wrote:
> 
>> Thanks Duane.  I am running about 10-12 feet of 10 gauge water 
>> resistant wire in a window and into the ac breaker.  I will have the 
>> black wire connected to one breaker, the red wire into the other 
>> breaker, and both the green and white connected to the grounding block 
>> in the box.
>>
>> When I throw the main, am I totally off the grid?  Is there any chance 
>> that poor wiring in the house could make this unsafe?  I have a new 
>> 120 amp service that was inspected by the city, but I cannot swear all 
>> the wiring in the house is the greatest...it's an older home.
>>
>> BTW, I am the one on the list that gave you those UPS's...sounds like 
>> they are getting good use.
> 
> 
> When you turn off the main, your circuit to the grid is off.  The 
> National Electrical Code specifies a transfer switch and something else 
> if I remember right.  Yours and mine may work well in an emergency.  
> Hopefully one day I will get the money for a proper transfer switch and 
> other things to meet the Code.  Its a well written guide that almost 
> eliminates any possibility of accidents.
> 
> Oh thank you!  I recognized your name after I sent the email!  This UPS 
> has been very nice during power outages.  One of these days, I'm going 
> to add solar power to this project.  If you ever need any help throwing 
> large stuff in the dumpster again, please let me know.  ;)
> 
> -=Duane
> http://dattaway.org
Well- my comments would be partially redundant save for my just having
  used parts of  what I preach .
The furnaces at the campground have been fitted with standard  3 prong
  15A plugs that are usually plugged into a socket assigned to it .
No expensive transfer switch or chance of a back feed - simply unroll a
  heavy enough extension cord- Almost took advantage of a camper with
a genset tonight" If the power stays off I may beg to plug into your genny"

Most rooms have a cheap flashlight from walmart or target of the
"comes on when power fails type " . I have a 1500 W inverter fitted with
car jumper cables on it's input side . Had tonight's power outage- from
2am till 345 or so been longer I would have hooked it up to a car -to run
each furnace long enough to keep pipes and us from freezing .Hardly 
ideal or
painless but bare survivability beats the alternatives . Hacking 
standard UPS
boxes to allow external batteries demands caution as the battery circuit is
often "hot" to earth ground! The automatic flashlights turned possible 
panic
into a mild annoyance . Knowing we had a heating backup if the power stayed
helps keep calm too , Now to be fair- I was VERY envious of our overnight
camper who had his genset autostart on the power failure !
That autostarting genset being what woke us up to hear the silence of no 
power .

This experience may make me speed up the Biodiesel project .
Several vendors are selling former rail reefer power units based on the
Detroit diesel 2-71 engine and a 30A 3 phase alternator head .
If connected properly one of these could keep a barely normal lifestyle .
Cost - 1 to 2 K genset itself and about the same to take it from a skid 
mounted
configure to a seamless autostart with transfer switch . NOT cost effective
compared to my ancient tripp-lite square wave inverter and running a car .
Used on Biodiesel in making the meter run backwards may have er- Potential .
Watts the point in missing a pun in an ot post anyways ?
To make the Biodiesel and generator thread back to topical we COULD use
Linux to design the systems and as control software . Even a future 
issue of
handshaking with a utilities SCADA system to isolate an "island" of  one 
or more
distributed generators - As some -see Sprint campus etc may have enough 
extra
to power some priority neighbors- Gas stations , grocery stores etc -how 
many
minutes of an hour do furnaces need to run to keep average houses at 50F ?
Thus rotating feeds into residential areas if reclosers could be so 
programmed ?
Hmn - the nontrivial modeling of such schemes cries out for a Linux 
cluster !

Oren