"aemeijers" wrote in message
...
ransley wrote:
On Sep 20, 9:27 am, "T. McQuinn" wrote:
I'm at day 7 in Cincinnati off the grid - which is nothing to cry about
considering the carnage in Texas!

I have a 30 year old 3500 watt generator from Sears. So far, it's
working fine. But I've been reading some of the threads about inverter
generators (which I had never heard of) and I would like to get some
opinions. I pulled the battery from my Ford Explorer and I use it at
night along with this:

http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/cta...emnumber=93761

During the day I recharge the car battery using a separate 12V output on
the generator that provides up to 8 amps. Funny, I used to wonder why
the hell I would need this. Anyway, today I am going to have to run my
business desktop PC for a while. Would I be better off hooking the car
battery to the generator 12V to keep it charged, then also hooking up
the inverter and running the PC off of it? I realize that I have a
cheap inverter but would the power out of it be less likely to feed a
spike or low voltage to my PC than this tired old generator? Or maybe
just charge the battery for a few hours and then just use the battery
and the inverter and do my work quickly?

This is the best photo I've found so far of the generator and the guy
has the engine partially disassembled:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2012/...7203ec.jpg?v=0

I would check voltage and cycle output on the gen, 3600 rpm is 120v -
60hz, go lower in V and cycles go lower, go higher than 120v and
cycles go higher. Adjust rpm with load used
Are the local big-boxes open? If so, go buy a cheap UPS unit, and put that
between your PC and your power, to clean it up at least a little. This
isn't a table saw- you are not only putting the PC at risk if a power
glitch happens, you are putting your data at risk, like if you happen to
be in the middle of a disk write when it all goes dark or spikes. Laptops
are better this way- they have some power filtering built in. If the
big-boxes are closed, inverter from battery, with no running engine
involved, is the safest. When picture starts flickering, save your work
and shut down. My agency has lost a lot of PCs and other computer
equipment, over in the sandbox, due to running them off dirty generator
power.

If you're running on dirty generator power and you want to have a UPS, you
should go for either low-end or high-end. Don't get anything in the middle.
The low-end UPS won't be very picky. It will let anything through. It could
be rough on your electronic equipment, but that's another issue. The
high-end UPS might have the ability to clean up the power, but you should
read the accompanying literature first to make sure it's recommended for use
with a generator. The middle-range UPS will go into a frenzy, switching back
and forth between battery and mains every few seconds - or it might just get
so horrified by what it sees that it turns itself off altogether.

Hint - you can stabilize the generator output a little bit by putting a
steady inductive load on it - assuming it has enough capacity to carry that
load, along with its other loads. I always run a dehumidifier at the maximum
setting when I'm on generator power. It's not a perfect solution, but it
does help - and the basement smells so clean and dry and fresh afterward.