Wallace, I do always take your cautions seriously.
Your too SeanO.
The easiest, safest, most practical way to handle big-Grid is to use an isolation approach.
They get the hard-to-convince Household primary.
YOU as needed power all other outside of that needs.
None interconnected. Interconnectable.
Developing, refining your all, outbuilding usages will refine down what you can make, operate and repair.
Plenty acceptable to extend out 240VAC for your weldes and such from the Grid-supplied house to get yourself to DIY power built up.
Now Grid down for what-ever and then you’ll learn to 24 hours, do nothing.
25 hours to 72 hours offer camping out in your off-grid DIY powered shop.
Mean while hustling to get the meter-head pop-off, to Grid disconnect.
Repower some of the 115 volts circuits from you DIY power.
I’m telling you; I’m telling you; IF YOU GIVE BACK HOUSEHOLD 240VAC you will never get them to keep their hands off demanding all of their expected power.
You you will be the asshole for withhold for their “needs”.
BYy 30 days Grid out folks learn to be appreciative for your something versus most of the neighbors, nothing. Or something’s and running out of fuels noisily making that.
31 to 90 days new routines get set.
Think how good of truly durable long-lived power making stuff you can get for the prices of Grid-compliances. Permits. Inspection. And certified equipments.
S.U.
Right now I’m just trying to have that gap stopped for the 1 week outage of a hurricane. Hurricane Hugo knocked us out according to mom for two weeks. That’s why we never went to an electric stovetop, you can always light a gas range with a BBQ lighter.
I need to research on our well pump and see what kinds of demands it has. See if I can get a DC swappable pump for when long term outages happen or if the AC pump goes kaput and takes time to get a replacement. We have two well holes drilled in the pump house, one I think is more shallow than the other, or they hit a rock. I do see some water inside it so it might be prudent to install a manual pump there for extreme backup.
What they are trying to do is prevent bad current from messing up their system, and up until smart meters they really didn’t have a way to control so it has been top down authority, which can also be said they are out to profiteer(which probably has some truth), etc. And until recently unless you had the perfect conditions, most of the technology had long payback periods if it had one at all.
solar is probably the easiest and cheapest right now, and most areas in the US, have a decent payback period. In the US, I think the tax credit, also covers just batteries and the inverter, so in theory, you don’t need the panels.
the electric code is pretty similar for canada and the us, and a lot of the laws and regulations are similar but there are variances. In the states they can vary between utility, state, region, etc.
The reason why I said to run it through the inverter was a bit less technical and a safety issue, and to help prevent from blowing appliances, as well as to stay away from a utility company disconnecting.
You are right, you if you have a fully isolated system from the utility, you don’t have to worry about them disconnecting you. If you know what you are doing, you probably won’t get caught, but most don’t know what they are doing.
I am not aware of that being a huge problem.
But I do know harmonics caused by a badly designed winding or the hi frequencies generated in AC and DC drives can cause bearings to fail .
Here is some interesting video on Windings.
There is also something not mentioned called " Cord factor " and this is the ratio of the full length of the pole to the actual length wound ( always wound less than 1 )
The combinations or DF distribution factor and CF cord factor is limited by the number of slots and poles in a motor and this has a huge factor on Harmonic generation.
Always both of these are less than one and the goal is to create a sign wave rather than a noisy square wave or step pyramid .
Harmonic generated in electrical equipment are mostly 3rd or tripling harmonics and these add to make square waves.
They are also more likely to cause heating of the materials in the motor and cause circulating currents like the ones I mentioned that cause bearing failure and the real world noises you are familiar in electrical equipment.
Cody this would run the well for a week.
This a lot easier then all this wack-a-doodle building talk.
All though these armchair guys are a lot of fun!!
Damn wish I lived on the coast, that’s about 6 hours away. I get what you’re saying though, have more direct use generators on hand and plenty to be had on the used market for cheap.
I get it. I think you are very right in what you are talking about.
I really appreciate all the help you put out here. I enjoy how far over the top you and Sean got on the induction motor generator. It’s never too much.
I will add this about it though, it’s obvious neither one of you have ever seen what happens to a portable generator that’s connected to the grid when it goes down. The first time you try to power up your neighborhood with your little generator is the first time you get to watch the engine just stop. Every circuit breaker that that generator has Pops at once. The way it works is the grid goes down you start the generator you plug it in as soon as that plug hits the outlet of the generator the circuit breaker pops or the engine stalls it’s just that simple.
Now let’s talk about something fun.
Have you ever used the double light bulb method to synchronize two portable generators on the same system?
This is an aplidyne and MG Set and I know where there’s one thats sitting unused that I would love to get my hands on if I had a micro hydro installation with a water wheel.
With care and attention these machines will make DC into AC, back and forth and can be very precisely controlled for speed and power output.
No electronics inside to fry in a thunderstorm.
But they were big and bulky and required care and attention to function properly ( very woman like machines )
Ya the hydro inspector would flip his wig if he saw this wired up to a Small hydro electric installation feeding power to a grid connected home and I WOULD LOVE to see that wig keep on flipping as he tried to tell me how it works and what was required by code to use it HA HA HA.
Ya that would be fun.
I would do stuff like that just for the novelty if I had the resources
Yes in school.
In the real world there are some self synchronizing systems, I will take a picture of Wednesday if I get over to south project and the compressor plant to show.
Most of the time your right.
I even mentioned that under the conditions that a the grid failed with an induction generator connected the field would collapse and the machine wold stop generating.
This is true 99% of the time.
But there are arguably situations where you could be the last house on a long rural road and the can up on a pole is energized if the line is severed.
A power line thats long enough and open at one end without much of a load on can be very capacitive and could resonant with an induction generator.
If could happen.
This is what a generator sees when connected to a powerline.
Next time your out in the country side and you happen a long a single phase transmission line look for a can on a pole.
See how that one phase circuit is connected to earth return.
There is a good reason for it, they are using some of that inductance of the transformer to help compensate the line.
In other place s you might just find inductors
On very long lines you might find series capacitors added to counter the series inductance of that line.
How these things may behave in an abnormal condition is the reason they don’t want you to back feed them
Right! I did wonder about that! There is a 10 mile long single line going from Phoenix to Delaware in Keweenaw county. I saw some strange things on the poles. There are no places where the power comes off to houses, so I wondered why the extra hardware.
Do these MG units also operate elevators? I think I saw one in a junk yard.
Yes.
Precision was needed and the way to do it was MG sets.
Where they really showed how precisely they could control and direct things were big naval guns in the 40s and 50s.
Now an elevator is not going to require that kind of precision.
But an MG set was still used with resistor banks and some governs and controls to smoothly control the speed of the elevator
I worked in a mill like this with equipment of this era and all if these motors and mills have to work together, turn at the right speeds, put out the correct amount of torque change direction and respond to the controls of the man in the pulpit watching the line.
The MG sets and the feedback controls provided from the Aplidynes all respond to the tiny signal inputs form the switches and levers the operators handle.
Consider this was all done without computers or solidi state electronics.
Maybe a few tubes and Mag amps…
I’m now in possession of not one, but two treadmill motors.
One of them I’m converting into a jumbo tumbler, the other I’m thinking to turn into a DC generator for battery charging.
Since most operate properly at 90-120 VDC I think the prudent thing to do would be to get a step down converter to bring it down from the 120V 10a to 12V, allowing it to spin at it’s proper RPM for cooling. Or would it be better off just spinning slower? The wires are obviously thin so I’d have to not demand a lot of amperage to keep them from overheating.
You mentioned grid tie inverters.These are great but have the problem that when the power goes out they turn off (sort of makes sense when a repair person might be touching the unpowered line) A friend of mine believes a grid tie inverter will connect and “tie” to a PSW inverter. This would have two inverters working together and offering a very usable amount of power. The problem is whether the grid tie inverter will recognize the counterfeit power source. This can be assisted by the counterfeit power wire running fluorescent tubes because they use little power and soften the power supply (they have capacitors etc) and make it more acceptable to the grid tie inverter. Such a setup is on my wish-list.
I think I would ideally have both grid tie and PSW inverters, I don’t think I’d gamble with using grid ties during power down. Would just be nice to skim down the grid power bill. Grid tie would be the last of my priorities. You can get them for fairly cheap. Also wouldn’t be a big ordeal to switch them over if you have both ready to be set up.
Finally making headway into getting the source of all the power in the house.
Our Mains panel is filled out entirely, it’s a General Electric 200a panel.
The crazy thing is, what it seems to be at least, is all the house power and the Central Heat & Air and well pump share the same 70a 240v breaker. That is honestly nuts to me. 16kw runs the whole house theoretically. It might even power the hot water heater, I have no outlet in the boiler room to test that. The way I know this is I got a circuit breaker finder, and our A/C and Pumphouse fuses are on the same breaker box but also has an outdoor GFCI outlet. I traced that sub-panel back to the Mains panel and to a second sub-panel right next to the Mains. Tested the same with an outlet inside the house and both go to the same two double throw breakers in both the Mains and nearby sub-panel.
There’s 3 other double throw fuses on the Mains panel and I have no clue what they go to. Two of them are labelled “Heat” but that could be the long defunct furnace heating system. The “Heat” fuses are on the side I’d need for installing an interlock kit.
I think the rest will require professional consultation.
The reason why I’m doing this spark chasing is so I can see if I can just remove one of the old fuses not being used for an interlock kit. I’m tired of sitting in the dark after more than a day. Also tired of no running water after a day, too. Power outages are getting more frequent, and there’s been obvious sabotage of substations and transformers in my state.
My shop has its own meter, it actually would be easier to interlock the shop circuits.
The 70a breaker is the master switch running to the sub-panel right next to the Mains panel. Either my circuit breaker finder is insensitive or the other breaker running to the A/C and Well is shared with the main house sub-panel.
The wiring was overhauled by an electrician back in 2008~2010 when we had the two Trane units installed. They had to add a grounding rod to the sub-panel going to the A/C and Pumphouse.
At the Mains box there’s 4 breakers of 240v with the Mains shutoff 480v at the top.
I’ll try to video this when I get home to explain it a little better, I’m more of a visual person.
The idea is to see if the “Heat” labelled 240v breaker is being used anymore and to change that out for my interlock kit.
Everything on the A/C and Pumphouse sub-panel has its own dedicated proper sized breaker. Those breakers trip before anything else if they’re overloaded. Each Trane unit has its own breaker, the pumphouse has its own breaker, and the outdoor outlet has its own as well.
You are right they have to be on a separate circuit. However, he has a box then it goes to a subpanel, and from there I assume they are on separate circuits. I am guessing that is in code.
