On Feb 17, 9:49*am, "Existential Angst" wrote:
"Pete S" wrote in message

...

I don't understand your question.
If you mean "capacitors" when you say "caps", I don't *know how they would
deal with output voltage regulation in any meaningful way.

Ditto. *ergo my Q. *I guess they must in some fashion, just like you balance
rpc's with caps.

What kind, model and serial number *of genset do you have that currently
has no voltage regulation built in to it?

http://www.generatorsales.com/order/...Generator.asp?...
modified for tri-fuel.

It is regulated, just not to 1 or 2%, a swing of 230 to 250 V, from 50+ amps
down to zero amps.
If you at mid-load it's 240 V, *that's +/-10V, which is not terrible, but
it's not 1% either.

Assume no electrical-type regulation at all. *There is something between the
generator itself and the gas engine that ups fuel flow with load,
maintaining a semi-constant voltage.

That would be the mechanical engine governor.


An AVR sharpens this up.

Yes



I don't quite understand how this works, and part of the intent of Q was to
shed some light on this.

See my other post to a discussion.



I also figgered that if the feedback between generator and engine was good
enough, AVR wouldn't be needed.
So basically I"m curious about the design of these things.
--
EA



Do you realize what you got for $2800? They take a Honda
engine and bolt it on to some generator made by someone
else. Perhaps you can shed light on to who that someone
else is, but given that it uses a cap for voltage regulation,
I would not be surprised that it's a cheap Chinese one.
Then they take pretty pictures of the thing with Honda showing
all over in the pretty pics and a lot of people make the
assumption that they are buying a Honda generator.
I don't believe that is the case.

Further arousing suspicion is that they claim it's 15KW.
Then if you read the specs, it says it's rated at 13.5KW
continuous. Then they say it has a 50 amp main
breaker, which equates to 12KW, in my world.

You with me so far? Further arrousing suspicion, they
quote fuel consumption in gallons, ie it's based on running
the engine on gas. So, next, let's look at the spec for
a Honda GX690. It says it produces 22hp running gasoline.
I'm no expert in conversions from gasoline to nat gas, but
AFAIK, when you run a gasoline engine on nat gas, you
have about 15% less energy output. Maybe someone has
the exact number. That means you really have about an
18hp engine.

I've looked into generators a bit and what it takes to
power them. I don't think you can get 15KW out of an
18hp engine. A Generac 12KW unit for example, uses
a 26hp engine.

Just some more things to think about.