Would lengthy blackouts create new manufacturing opportunities?

[Scottl]

And what is this "inrush current" that you speak of? Generators don't usually have any current going into them, it's the other way around. And the Honda generators have breakers for if someone puts too much load on them. I've tripped the breaker on my Honda 2K several times but it never did any damage to it. I'm calling BS on your claim of "several" people that you know having them fail.

And I'm calling BS on your knowledge of electricity. Inrush current is caused by the LOAD from things like start windings and capacitors and also from magnetic hysteresis in things like transformer windings. Because this inrush only lasts for milliseconds it can stress things like IGBTs before any breaker can trip and usually happens in too short of a time for the breaker to trip. Repeated "insults" of this nature WILL eventually degrade many semiconductor devices.

 

[Scottl]

Once again, a simple request for info on banal subject gets rerouted right into the shit show tent.

Thanks for that.

And from one of the usual sources, one with a long history of insult instead of debate and who has repeatedly demonstrated a profound lack of knowledge on many real world subjects.

 

[michiganbuck]

QT somebody in this case, the fuel (natural gas) comes through a pipe.0
Most/Many NG and propane generators can be converted to car gas fuel carburetor rated for that many cubic inches.
I have a generator that I forgot to mention that was used to run a small hospital
It was a 4-cylinder NG unit, and I added a gas tank and a carburetor.
Haven used it for anything it is just in storage

 

[jim rozen]

"Potable water came from a "cased in" spring and big cistern high enough up the hill to gravity-feed the second storey bathroom. Septic field was downhill."

So your folks had that fancy 'indoor plumbing' eh.

That AK radio had B batteries that had to be bought, but it also had a 6V, lead acid A battery to light the tubes. Your grandad either charged it hooked to a car or tractor, or took it to place downtown where they did that for a fee. There were 5 or 6 tubes in the set and each drew 1/4 amp. You do the math.

As you pointed out the best situation to exist at when there's no electricity, is a place where there never was any to start with. At one time my parents considered buying a cabin up the canyon from Portal, AZ and I was with them when they looked into it. Two rooms, hand pump in the kitchen, and a path to an outhouse. No electricity although there was a single feeder on the main road going up the canyon so it was possible. I seem to recall there was a woodstove.

This all looked nice in the summer but the nearest doctor was an hour away in Douglas, and the nearest store and gas was 1/2 hour away in Rodeo, NM. The canyon road could get snowed in in winter.

Of grid is great until something goes wrong. Then you need to be sure you did all the planning right.

 

[Big B]

And I'm calling BS on your knowledge of electricity. Inrush current is caused by the LOAD from things like start windings and capacitors and also from magnetic hysteresis in things like transformer windings. Because this inrush only lasts for milliseconds it can stress things like IGBTs before any breaker can trip and usually happens in too short of a time for the breaker to trip. Repeated "insults" of this nature WILL eventually degrade many semiconductor devices.

Like I said, I've overloaded my Honda inverter generator plenty of times when I forgot to turn the refrigerator or water heater off of electric while the battery bank is pulling a large load but in 16 years never had anything happen except that I needed to reset the breaker by turning it off and restarting it back up.

If these Honda inverter generators are failing so much, why aren't any of them showing up on craigslist or marketplace as parts generators. And yet you have not just one friend or a coupe of friends or a few friends but several friends who have had them fail? What did they all do when they failed? Fix them? Pitch them in a land fill?

I'm on a bunch of Facebook off grid groups and can't recall ever seeing anyone post about them failing.

I would have just let this go but when you tell things like this it may make some people stick with the old, noisy, inefficient generators and that would be a shame.

And as to my knowledge of electricity, I can hold my own with most and don't need to post a bunch of terms like IGBT, magnetic hysterisis and transformer windings to try to support my argument.

We were talking about all of those inverter generators failing a lot and I'm just not seeing it in spite of being around generators many times the amount that most people are.

 

[Scottl]

QT ( in this case the fuel (natural gas) comes through a pipe.0
Most/Many NG and propane generators can be converted to car gas fuel carburetor rated for that many cubic inches.

The question is why? The Generac Standby Generators (and similar units by Kohler, Briggs & Stratton and others) are meant to operate reliably without requiring human intervention. This means you don't even have to be home. If you are away on a 2 week vacation and the power fails they will automatically start and switch the circuits over, keeping your freezer cold and your heat or air conditioning working. That means you won't come home to spoiled food, frozen pipes or moldy house in hot humid climates.

Also, because they run on natural gas the oil stays cleaner longer.

 

[michiganbuck]

Stand-by automatic start units are great..and the natural gas is pretty reliable, same with propane as long as the tank is full.

With all our power failures I'm not sure how long NG would come through the pipe... but the propane tank would still work.

 

[Big B]

And from one of the usual sources, one with a long history of insult instead of debate and who has repeatedly demonstrated a profound lack of knowledge on many real world subjects.

Stop posting misinformation and I'll stop calling you out on posting misinformation. 2=2=4, NOT 37 or anything but 4.

Tell us more about those "several" of your friends that had inverter generators fail in detail.

I will agree with you that a whole house generator that is hooked up to a natural gas line should be able to run for a week straight non stop though.

 

[Scottl]

And as to my knowledge of electricity, I can hold my own with most and don't need to post a bunch of terms like IGBT, magnetic hysterisis and transformer windings to try to support my argument.

We were talking about all of those inverter generators failing a lot and I'm just not seeing it in spite of being around generators many times the amount that most people are.

If you had a clue you would know that IGBT stands for insulated-gate bipolar transistor, and they are commonly used in the output stages of inverters and other power electronics. They are rugged devices and usually used with protective devices but all such protective devices degrade with continued "hits" and the IGBT can eventually fail.

Magnetic hysteresis is a phenomenon commonly seen in modern transformers using the best steels for cores. If the power is interrupted at the zero crossing and then later reapplied at the same phase angle the effect is as if there was no core but only the copper winding, resulting in a brief (milliseconds long) surge of enormous magnitude. In one instance I investigated we observed a 1,500 amp spike on a 30 amp, 240 volt circuit and the breaker did not trip because it was a thermal unit and the spike didn't last long enough to heat it to the trip point. The problem turned out to be a transformer with insufficient primary turns and the vendor was ordered to fix future units.

 

[Scottl]

Stand-by automatic start units are great..and the natural gas is pretty reliable, same with propane as long as the tank is full.

With all our power failures I'm not sure how long NG would come through the pipe... but the propane tank would still work.

At least where I live power failures have never affected gas flow, which is fortunate because we have a gas stove and water heater. We can't use the oven during a blackout but can light the burners with a match although we eventually bought a battery operated spark ignitor. The water heater has a thermopile and pilot light so it runs without need of any electrical hookup. The gas company has standby generators themselves at critical facilities, same as other critical infrastructure such as pumping stations for water.

 

[Big B]

If you had a clue you would know that IGBT stands for insulated-gate bipolar transistor, and they are commonly used in the output stages of inverters and other power electronics. They are rugged devices and usually used with protective devices but all such protective devices degrade with continued "hits" and the IGBT can eventually fail.

Magnetic hysteresis is a phenomenon commonly seen in modern transformers using the best steels for cores. If the power is interrupted at the zero crossing and then later reapplied at the same phase angle the effect is as if there was no core but only the copper winding, resulting in a brief (milliseconds long) surge of enormous magnitude. In one instance I investigated we observed a 1,500 amp spike on a 30 amp, 240 volt circuit and the breaker did not trip because it was a thermal unit and the spike didn't last long enough to heat it to the trip point. The problem turned out to be a transformer with insufficient primary turns and the vendor was ordered to fix future units.

That's nice. Now about all of those Honda inverter generators that are failing.

 

[latheman78]

And from one of the usual sources, one with a long history of insult instead of debate and who has repeatedly demonstrated a profound lack of knowledge on many real world subjects.

Agree 100%

 

[latheman78]

Stop posting misinformation and I'll stop calling you out on posting misinformation. 2=2=4, NOT 37 or anything but 4.

Tell us more about those "several" of your friends that had inverter generators fail in detail.

I will agree with you that a whole house generator that is hooked up to a natural gas line should be able to run for a week straight non stop though.

Look who is talking. The guy who claims there is a steel mill that runs off of solar.

 

[Scottl]

Look who is talking. The guy who claims there is a steel mill that runs off of solar.

Well the mill may not be running yet but it seems the 300-MW Bighorn Solar facility that is to run it has been completed and commissioned in early March.

However, as I said in an earlier reply to him not only do many other parts of the country not have 1,800 acres to spare for a solar installation but also do not have the same daily insolation as that desert facility.

 

[Milling man]

The guy who claims there is a steel mill that runs off of solar.

Let's be fair though - even if that particular plant is still down, that doesn't mean it's impossible to build a solar-powered steel mill.

 

[latheman78]

Let's be fair though - even if that particular plant is still down, that doesn't mean it's impossible to build a solar-powered steel mill.

No one said it is impossible. My point was someone made a claim to something that was untrue, which I find is typical of people pimping green energy. For the most part these days there are plenty of people who spread lies for the cause whether it is through passing on information without proper research or flat out lying. Case in point, Biden saying 9mm bullets shoot lungs out of the body, a police Chief saying .223 bullets decapitate people and blow limbs off. A surgeon saying they could do nothing for people shot with AR-15 rounds because their organs were liquefied. A medical examiner saying a girl shot with .223 rounds had to be identified from her tennis shoes as those rounds pulverize bodies.

About the only one of the above who isn't outright lying is probably Biden he is just passing on BS someone told him. People who like to rip on green energy will also tell half stories and lie, I am not saying it doesn't go both ways.

Where does a person go for the truth these days? It gets old trying to dig it up.

 

[standardparts]

This all looked nice in the summer but the nearest doctor was an hour away in Douglas, and the nearest store and gas was 1/2 hour away in Rodeo, NM. The canyon road could get snowed in in winter.

Of grid is great until something goes wrong. Then you need to be sure you did all the planning right.

""This all looked nice in the summer but the nearest doctor was an hour away in Douglas, and the nearest store and gas was 1/2 hour away in Rodeo, NM. The canyon road could get snowed in in winter............Of grid is great until something goes wrong. Then you need to be sure you did all the planning right.""

Yeah......Often times people don't consider the ramifications of living in isolated places. They also don't factor in getting old and being unable to hike out of a situation.
Youtube is full of vids that make living off grid out in the wild pretty appealing---until shit goes wrong.

While living in the Four Corners area of CO, NM, AZ, UT drove into a lot of areas that with a change in the weather you may not be able to get out. One winter storm a hunting party was resupplied by Nat'l Guard helicopter because there was no other way to bring in feed for the horses they packed in on so unless the horses were fed they were really in a tough spot.

About "getting the planning right"---yeah a noble thing but something always conspires to upset the best laid plans.

 

[Scottl]

""This all looked nice in the summer but the nearest doctor was an hour away in Douglas, and the nearest store and gas was 1/2 hour away in Rodeo, NM. The canyon road could get snowed in in winter............Of grid is great until something goes wrong. Then you need to be sure you did all the planning right.""

Yeah......Often times people don't consider the ramifications of living in isolated places. They also don't factor in getting old and being unable to hike out of a situation.
Youtube is full of vids that make living off grid out in the wild pretty appealing---until shit goes wrong.

While living in the Four Corners area of CO, NM, AZ, UT drove into a lot of areas that with a change in the weather you may not be able to get out. One winter storm a hunting party was resupplied by Nat'l Guard helicopter because there was no other way to bring in feed for the horses they packed in on so unless the horses were fed they were really in a tough spot.

About "getting the planning right"---yeah a noble thing but something always conspires to upset the best laid plans.

Hell, I know people in parts of rural New Hampshire who live off unimproved roads that turn to mud wallows for a while in early spring that only serious 4 wheel drives can handle. Ordinary SUVs just get bogged down so super important to have enough food and supplies on hand. In the event of a medical crisis they would have to rely on neighbors with heavy duty pickups to get them to where they could meet an ambulance on a main road. I've reached an age where I'm not eager to get too far off the beaten path except with a group. In my younger years I wouldn't hesitate but the sense of invulnerability fades with age.

 

[Thunderjet]

Yeah......Often times people don't consider the ramifications of living in isolated places. They also don't factor in getting old and being unable to hike out of a situation.

Everybody's Less Stroud, until they're not.

 

[latheman78]

Yeah......Often times people don't consider the ramifications of living in isolated places. They also don't factor in getting old and being unable to hike out of a situation.

Not me, I always remember stuff I did in my youth that would be impossible today. In lieu of free rent my friend and I lived in a large old cabin style house with his sister and her 3 kids. The place was pretty much abandoned when my friend's parents went to take care of his grandmother full time. His sister was getting divorced. We just were fixing up the house and watching over her and the 3 kids in lieu of paying rent. The house was on an unmaintained road with only one other full time resident. We were nearly 2 miles from any serviced road.

In winter if we were well stocked I would just park my truck that 2 miles away and hike back and forth to it. Maybe if I had a monster truck I could have got in and out of there if 18" of snow fell in a day, but I didn't. The Old Fire of 2003 destroyed that whole area well after we moved down the hill.