On Tuesday, December 23, 2014 10:31:58 AM UTC-5, Smarty wrote:
On 12/22/2014 2:10 PM, Danny D. wrote:
O Wren wrote, on Mon, 22 Dec 2014 08:41:32 -0500:

With this being the week of Festivus, good luck with that...LOL.

What you could do is open the hood on your generator and measure/record
the battery voltage.

Then disconnect the ground lead of the battery, wait 24 hours, and
measure the battery voltage again.

If the battery voltage drops after being disconnected from the generator
for 24 hours, the generator obviously has a grid-powered charging
circuit.

Capeesh?
Is this "Oren"?

Anyway, I was dead wrong and all you guys were right (as usual).
I called Generac at 888-436-3722x2(consumer)x2(existing product)x2
(permanent)x3(all other)...wait...

The lady who answered said instantly that all the built-in generators
are charged from the "T1" wire from the house.

She said the "T1" wire was blue or white and went in behind the
control panel. She didn't know the difference between 120VAC and 12VDC,
but still, she was sure that the T1 wire fed the battery.

She said when it exercises, it doesn't generate any power.

So, based on that, I was dead wrong.
The built-in generator charges the battery from the mains.
I was wrong.


As I posted earlier, my Generac works as you now state. It only charges
the battery when not running, and when the electric company power is
available.

I'm 99% certain you're wrong on that. The Generac I'm familiar with
charges either from AC or when the generator is running. It would
be pretty dumb to have a design where once power is lost, the generator
battery can't be recharged. Even D's generator clearly has a charging
circuit off the generator itself. If you have a link for a schematic
to your generator, I'd be happy to see it.





I did go to the authoritative site for Generac repairs,
Ziller, and did learn that some of their products do indeed have a
winding on the generator coil which provides a low AC voltage for
rectification / making 12VDC.

The distinction of which Generac has or does not have this "charge when
running" feature is thus model specific, and getting a schematic for
your specific model would be the way I would research it if the Ziller
experts had no opinion, (an unlikely scenario).

So far, the one you say you have is the only one I've heard of
where the generator isn't capable of charging it's own battery.