LR engine mounted 240V generator

3000rpm! = 50Hzs

NOT if its a multipole generator. Steve

Pulled figures from the ether. My TD5 will produce 135bhp (in theory) so I suspect that 150 for 3.5 V8 is on the low side.

What does it idle at? If 750 it might be possible to rewire the windings on the generator to still produce 50Hz @ 750rpm but I have sneaky feeling it's not really that simple. The other gotcha is how do you ensure that the revs don't change under variations in load?

Did that shortly after I got a 2kW diesel genset from eBay. Nice little, virtually new set with electric start. Will run on red or probably cooking oil but the last lot of bulk cooking oil I looked at cost about the same as red. Noisey and smokes summat awful when starting up, might be burning a bit of oil when cold (slight pale blue smoke) but is clean once warm.

Other backups are a couple of gas lamps, light sticks and two burner & grill camping "hob". The power can go here now and we wouldn't be overly fussed, food might be beans on toast but at least it's hot and the heating will still run.

Wus trying to KISS!

Wus trying to keep the noise down....

Steve

It must have been around the mid 80's I remember seeing a leaflet advertising it, IIRC it was shown fitted to a Ford P100 pick up, and yes, apart from charging the vehicle battery you could also weld with it!, and one of the pictures showed it running lights It was a mate that ran a company building generators for the oil industry that showed me it. Another good idea that was probably too expensive and just died a death.....

Des

Scroll down about half way and you'll see they do a 240 v alternator.

A

bad

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I also remember that one - I even had the advertsing bumf around for a while: but can never find it when wanted.

The Ledgard modified alternator seems to come from Dometic:

... several ratings available and probably not cheap either.

You'd really need to run it at close to maximum BMEP for best economy - it would be pretty diabolical at near idle efficiency wise.

Thanks for all the comments, as I said earlier I think, I already have a wind turbine + 350ah of batteries + pure sine inverter linked via auto switching into the house system for lights and heating pump (wood fired rayburn), so most of the time a power cut is not a problem, especially if the wind keeps up! My plan was for something that could be used as a last resort when the batteries gave out.

I think the cost of the PTO will rule that option out, I will look further into the 240V alternator - thanks for the link (maybe also useful for power tools away from home), and also just the simplest of ideas where I connect the LR battery (possibly additional leisure one) to the existing inverter system when the main battery bank gives up. This would only cost me a few metres of 100amp cable plus some connecters (anderson I think they're called).

Cheers, Andrew

Is there a web page or three about that system or suppliers site? A small (handful of kW) wind turbine is a possibility for here. May even be able to sell to the grid...

That strikes me as the best option. Maybe uprate the alternator on the LR so you can charge the main bank (is that 12v?) from the LR at a reasonable rate. ie running the LR on a hand throttle at more than idle thus improving the efficiency, it'll still be crap just less crap. Always assuming that you can get the LR close to the battery bank, you don't want to be running LV cables any distance.

On or around Tue, 25 Sep 2007 20:53:10 +0100, "GbH" enlightened us thusly:

it's all down to the alternator. If run at other than the rated speed, it'll not produce 50Hz.

On or around Tue, 25 Sep 2007 21:32:33 +0100 (BST), "Dave Liquorice" enlightened us thusly:

the standard carb engines don't produce 150 BHP.

Not really, its a "home built system", turbine is 400w 12v on 6m pole tower, connected via Trace C60 charge controller, 3 x 120ah batteries, Mobitronic 600W pure sine wave inverter to 240v, then 30metres amoured cable to the house via double pole changeover 240vac coil relay, so when inverter is on, the relay switches over to the inverter supply rather than grid, this supplies lighting circuit and heating pump controls only. I also directly control the inverter through a PLC controller (my day job is programming PLC's) which monitors the battery voltage and switches the inverter on and off accordingly. Without this the inverter switches itself on and off according to voltage. If I did it again I would not bother with batteries, just make a grid connected system and have a different back up for power failure (as discussed above!!). If you're serious, then measure wind speeds for a year or so - I've just ordered one of these :-

looks like fun.

Good idea, I can get the LR within about 5m of the batteries, a good set of jump leads should do the job!

cheers,

Andrew

IIRC some low compression early carb engines for this sort of use were under 100 bhp...

I'd just be sorting out a small petrol engine driving an ordinary vehicle alternator to charge the batteries. With a wee bit of careful playing with the regulator and gearing it should be possible to get a sensible amount of charge out of it at low enough revs to keep it quiet.

Otherwise just follow my lead and invest in a nicely silenced 15kVA diesel genset and hide it in a bunker in the garden - during the last major power outage I had half the neighbourhood coming round for food and hot showers.

in the farmers weekly there is an advert for a pto generator the fits on the three point to generate 240v

Thanks, but these are usually quite big, and also the tractor is too noisy to run for any length of time. There are a couple on ebay as well.

Andrew

Ah, right thanks for the back ground.

Been recording the wind here since Aug 1999:

So have a good history to analyse at some point. Several small trubines have sprung up in the general area in the last year or so. I don't count the B&Q offering as anything other than a fashion statement. I'd be looking at something with a 10' or greater rotor and an output >3kW. The theory being that our base load is about 1kW so anything extra can be sold to help offset the capital costs.