Backup generator discussion

@ESmith I was looking for something that my parents did where they have these flashlights that have USB chargers on them to charge phones that plug into the outlet and stay charged and I came across this thing.

I have stared at it for about 5 min and I still have no idea what is going on here.

Am I crazy or does that pull power off a analog phone line.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/VR3-Phone-Jack-Powered-Night-Light-USB-Charger-PJNL-USB/311903670

Devices like that have been around for decades, albeit mostly in homebrew format. There simply isn’t a lot of power to be extracted from a POTS loop.

On-hook (receiver down, phone idle), the loop should be pushing nominal 48V to keep the phone powered up to receive calls - <10mA. Draw too much and the switch will either assume you’re trying to make a call or take the loop out of service for a presumed wiring fault.

Off-hook (receiver up, phone ready to dial or receiving a call), the voltage will drop 3-9V but the current is nominally ≤100mA so potentially up to ~4.5W. Of course you can’t receive calls in this condition.

All of this is kind of moot with newer VoIP systems there the loop terminates within one’s premise and at best you’re inefficiently extracting power from a local battery backup.

How about getting an inverter and connecting to the car battery . Run the car connected to the inverter to keep the fridge cold . If possible to find one large enough to run a window unit if necessary…

Not a bad idea in a pinch but this isn’t a good long term solution. Cars are way more expensive than generators and alternators don’t generate that much electricity by comparison (around 1 kW). Plus people might need to go somewhere with the car.

That was pretty much my initial idea - only with deep cycle batteries which can handle deep discharges.

I went to medium voltage drive school with a guy who did that with his Prius in the aftermath of Sandy.

He did say he had hell getting down to PA to get some more gas for it

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This is an older article but this guy took the prius-generator concept probably as far as it’ll reasonably go.

http://www.aprs.org/FD-Prius-Power.html

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I know I hav thought about doing a PTO from a vehicle to power a PTO driven Generator. I didn’t look too much into the economics of it though. My thought was to use an old vehicle. If I could not use gas (IE run out of it), transfer to a wood gas.

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Last time I looked into it, there wasn’t a generator attachment for the folks’ lawn tractor which is unfortunate since the tractor is handily self-propelled and has a decent-sized engine.

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Now that, that sounds like a project. If you want something interesting…

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Do they have a PTO on it?

I’ve looked at various plans for push mower generator mods. All the designs I’ve seen looked to be clunky tempermanent things. For lack of a reliable push mower, their really high decibel levels when operating, and the metalworking I wasn’t equipped for at the time I lost interest.

No. It’s not that substantial of a lawn tractor - Deere X330 I believe. Accessories seemed to be largely passive or relying on whatever DC power the engine can provide - carts, spreaders, aerators, sprayers.

So here’s an interesting exercise…
I search for this model.
I get this web site
https://www.deere.com/en/mowers/lawn-tractors/x300-series/x330-lawn-tractor/
I notice a “Snow removal is a strength of lawn tractors” section to expand, which looks like this:

Note the circled bit? How is that snowblower powered? I’m thinking “hell, the whole mower system is a PTO!! Why not use that? I wonder if that’s what this does?”

I can NOT find anything further about this allegedly available AND strength-exploiting snowblower…

PS I also can’t figure out if the mower deck is “driveon/driveoff”. If so, that might be easliy leveraged into action for a generator design…

I found that they remove the mower deck & use the belt to drive it.
Here is a video. At 3:35 they show the belt being put on.

So I guess you could PTO a generator. Some fabrication required though. Lol

@ESmith could win son of the year. Lol

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That mower has turned out to be a maintenance pig. Think they still have it, but have procured another mower that’s actually cutting the grass.

Better outcomes all around to procure something specific to the task of backup power.

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I’ve thought about this quite a bit. I’ve got a rather small 700w generator and a small 100w 120v battery. It’s certainly not enough to surge-start a fridge, but it’s enough to make sure that I can charge a laptop and run my network equipment for most of the day with the battery being available as a small overnight power source for a couple of lights, to be charged by the genny in the AM. I do think that someday soon I’ll probably upgrade the generator to something large enough to re-cool my fridge/freezer for a few hours and maybe run a tiny window AC unit for an overnight run, but the compressor start power requirements are something to take into account for sure.

I think that there is a pretty big untapped market for an attachment that would go onto an existing gas engine. My mower has started on every pull for years, and wouldn’t be enough to do any more than I’ve currently got, but even a tiny string trimmer would be enough of a power source to charge up some phones in an emergency. Conversely, i’ve taken the blade off of my mower, and if I could purchase a OEM attachment that would turn it into a generator, I’d certainly consider one!

I contemplated such a thing years ago and came to the conclusion that it would be difficult to make something that’s an easy slip-on unit that can sneak through a side-discharge or bag hatch compatible with enough mowers to keep the appeal wide enough. But maybe someone will prove me wrong.

I fully realize that especially for a push mower, that it’d likely be a hour long affair that would require tools and probably an assistant to help lift the mower itself, but I think that there are probably enough people who would see the value to make a marketable product out of it. I’m thinking that it’d be the kind of thing that the blade would be removed and then the engine removed from the deck to be mated to the top of the generator unit. The mower itself would likely have to be slightly re-designed for such a task, but that combined with additional things, generator, water pump, high CFM blower, etc, might make for a decently marketable kit.

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For those times when you need to power a neighborhood with your tractor.

There are dozens of tutorials out there on how to remove the engine from a lawnmower deck and connect it to a generator. It’s enough work and used lawnmowers cheap enough that you might as well make it a dedicated unit.

I might be handing someone a business idea, but here goes - consider tossing me a decent thank you gift if you can make it work and get rich. A general idea of what I’m thinking of:
image

That particular setup is probably just an automotive alternator connected to the shaft by a pulley; appears to be reversible so long as you can suffer the anchor points in the deck.

Now imagine something similar that uses clamps maintain its position on the discharge port, has some means of tensioning the pulley so as to be widely compatible with a variety of mowers, and has an actual ~1kW generator attached. Setting it up is probably just a 15 minute job that’s only a little more involved than a blade change.

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