On Sun, 06 May 2018 04:01:03 -0700, therustyone wrote:

trimmer for several minutes, which added to the time I had to consider
what to have for breakfast. If you remember dear you bought the trimmer
for me as a birthday present when I reached my ninetieth. That was an
occasion to remember! The firemen were quite rude weren't they, after
the 90 candles set the curtains on fire! It was lucky I had the fire
extinguisher that I bought on special offer at Lidl in 2013!
Mrs G: What do want for your ****ing breakfast you despicable old
cretin?
Mr G: No need to shout dear. Cornflakes please. Remember when we bought
a pallet of cornflakes from...


That saga reads very similar to the classic Victorian spoof "Diary of a
Nobody" by Grossmith in which he manages to screw up the house
maintenance and just about everything else in his life, while blaming
everybody else. Circa 1890.

You appear to be implying that Bill's inspiration for his well observed
spoof wasn't entirely original thought but merely a rehash of a late 19th
century work of fiction. You just might be right.

Bill seems to be quite a literate person (he used to entertain us with
some quite amusing, if a little off topic, pages' long anecdotes in this
news group from time to time).

However, since you asked, I finally got round to doing some load testing
this afternoon. It's the first time in over a fortnight since I last
fired it up to test its compatibility with my SmartUPS2000 that had so
distressed the previous 2.8KVA generator set as to put paid to my dream
of being able to backup my UPS backup supply with a petrol powered
generator.

Considering I had taken the precaution of shutting the fuel off at the
end of its last outing to run the carburettor dry before storing it away
for an undetermined period, it started up relatively easier than the
first time I'd struggled to start it up from new. I think a mere four or
five yanks on the starter cord was all it needed.

Anyway, we had replaced our 4 slice 1800W toaster with a 900W 2 slice
job bought an hour earlier which proved rather convenient as a test load.
Armed with three 150W lamps and a motley collection of 40 and 60 watt
lamps, a couple of 20W cfls and two 6W LEDs, I was able to pinpoint the
overload level to within about 5 watts or so.

I was slightly disappointed to discover that the maximum sustained
output threshold, before the microprocessor controlled inverter/Engine
Management module decided to wink its displeasure, was a mere 980W rather
than the 1020 to 1050 watts I'd hoped to see.

I didn't bother to verify with the analogue wattmeter which, in any
case, like the digital one I was using, was only specced for an accuracy
of +/-3% and pretty well tracked the digital meters to within 1%. Since
the lamp load when checked on the 240v mains had given a slightly lower
reading than expected, it's quite possible the inverter genset might well
be 'spot on the money' (sadly - I'd rather the setting had been at the
upper end of the tolerance range).

Overloading the genset to the 1200W mark didn't result in a 5 seconds to
shutdown event as per the specifications, it was more like 30 seconds
before the inverter module cut the power. Annoyingly, even with only a
slight overload, 990W according to my meter, it didn't run any longer
than the 30 seconds it had suffered on the 1200W overload before tripping
out. If I could discover a trimpot for calibrating the overload point, it
seems I could safely get away with recalibrating it upwards by another
50W.

The last module I'd seen the backside of (on the other generator my son
and I had almost completely stripped down about 3 weeks ago), most of the
components were embedded in potting compound with a couple of
electrolytic capacitors poking out. I can't recall seeing any signs of
trimpots as I'd seen in pictures of an ancient Honda 350W inverter module
but that doesn't mean they don't exist.

I might be able to track them down if I look 'real hard' but that's a
thought for another day and best left to when its finally out of warranty
anyway, preferably after I've tracked down a circuit schematic and
physical layout (or else have a spare module handy to experiment with -
you never know).

Thinking about it, I can't recall whether I actually used all three of
the 150W lamps alongside of the 870W toaster load to rack it up to the
1290W mark (the lamps only show 140W on the 230v generator supply versus
145W on the 240v mains supply). I think I need to do a little more load
testing.

This time, I might rig up a variable load using a Philips 220v 180VA
panel mount variac transformer to feed one of the 150W lamps. Being a
panel mount design, the variac is non too safe to use 'naked' so it's
never been used in anger in all the time it's been in my possession for
the past 40 odd years.

It's high time I put it to good use. I'm fed up with trying to permutate
a test lamp collection of various wattages to obtain a best approximation
to a desired wattage loading. Mounting that variac and four BC22 batten
light sockets onto a suitable box will let me trim the lamp test load to
any desired value from zero through to just under 600 watt's worth.

That and whatever other convenient resistive loads I have to hand should
allow me to test right up to the limits of a 13A socket (circa 3KW on a
230v supply voltage) let alone the 1200W limit of the current inverter
genset.

Interestingly (for those who may care), I noticed that even when on the
higher, non-eco setting, the revs would still ramp up with heavier loads
such as the toaster or the 3x150W lamp test load. In the eco mode the
revs didn't start to increase until around the 80W mark.

These cheap inverter gensets with their eco-mode switch settings might
be quieter on no/very light loads but at half to full load they can
become almost as noisy as their even cheaper open frame generator
cousins. Even expensive Honda eu models suffer from this noise level
increase with modest to full loadings. The key difference, apart from in
this case costing over 8 times as much, is that they start some 15 to
20dB or so quieter.

Until recently, you had no choice but to pay the Honda eu price premium
if you wanted a neighbourhood friendly source of backup power. Now Honda
are facing serious competition from other manufacturers such as Generac
who've recently produced an even quieter inverter genset than Honda's
existing quietest models.

For anyone seriously considering an upgrade to their existing UPS backup
power solution and prepared to pay a little more than I did, might do
well to hold off on their purchase since it's highly likely the price
premium for quietness will become somewhat eroded over the coming years.
However, that Lidl inverter genset was *so* cheap, that wouldn't stop me
upgrading to a much quieter 2KVA model anyway once the price premium
drops to a more reasonable level. It would simply mean I'd have a 'spare
backup generator' to my backup generator. :-)

--
Johnny B Good