Look for the “FLA” rating on your blower nameplate. Or throw a clamp-meter around the supply wires and flip it on.
FLA stands for “full load amps”. On something like a squirrel cage, this is most likely to occur when the motor starts from a stand-still. You’ll here people talk about a motor’s “in-rush current” in relation to starting motors versus once their up and running steady state, where its more of a maintenance current. If you have a lot of loads like this often times your electricity provider will put you on a demand meter to measure (bill for) the peak instantaneous power used.
Anyhow, just don’t forget about FLA when you plan for your generator.
The time to get {insert emergency preparedness item here} is well before the disaster is on the horizon and every other rube living on the thin logistical margins of JIT microeconomics panics.
Finally dialed in my minimal WFH needs and it looks like I could nearly live within the envelope of a ~2000W starting / ~1600W running generator if I had to:
The real key was separating out the nonsense situation of running the window unit AC and the furnace simultaneously. Also, the sum of starting loads is deceptive since circuits will be enabled sequentially.
Yeah, there’s a whole house main that tries to “learn” what’s turning on by having you turn it on and tell it, oh, I just turned on the bathroom heater, and it’s like, oh that’s 1576W, so now when I see a 1576W load I know it’s the bathroom heater and I can tell you how much power it uses in a year.
There’s also circuit level breakers that communicate to the main breaker/cloud so it can tell that’s the “bathroom” circuit so it’s probably the heater but it could be a hair dryer too.
Do you by chance know the name so I can do a search? I’m curious as to how expensive it is. I really want it broken down by circuits. There’s a few that I definitely want to watch.
I don’t, a buddy showed me how it worked on his house. If you can’t find it let me know and I’ll shoot him a text. The main thing is finding an electrician to install it for you. I’d napkin math a couple grand for the breakers and a few hundred for labor.
Eh, this was for estimation purposes and it was a tedious manual process. It was a combination of using the maximum value on appliance (individual loads i.e. lights, computer, furnace) labels, making generous estimates for appliances with no label, associating each appliance with a circuit, then dicing and slicing each appliance based on categories (priority/default status, seasonality, etc). I hope that I was overly generous on the estimates and that the actual load ends up being a tad less - some overhead on running watts is a good thing.
let’s say I wanted to run my furnace on my generator - do yall just have a plug inline to your furnace that you can unplug if needed. Or perhaps just leave it as is and when the need arises, you go up there with a knife?
It al depends. Ive seen some with naturally with plugs. Otherwise there should be a switch at the unit(Light switch) that you can unwire & wire the “suicide” cord into it.
Amusing that after ordering the the following last week and awaiting their arrival…
… I suffered a ~1:20 power outage today. My UPSs managed a positively heroic 30 minutes of uptime before I was forced to go into minimal mode with the laptop tethered to the phone.
Anyway. After consulting with the internet and some knowledgeable folks I opted for 2 smaller generators in parallel for a number of reasons:
Redundancy
Actual loads will often fall within the capabilities of one generator, which will be more efficient than running a larger unit at <50% load
Smaller and handier units are more likely to see periodic use for projects and other functions beside the chore of a monthly/quarterly “fire up the generator” to-do item
I’m still pondering the ultimate form that the outdoor enclosure will take. DIY’ing a doghouse will be a fun project ala the notorious shed. But a job box would be faster, more secure, probably easier to soundproof, and could be obfuscated with a clever facade; problem being that the smallest job box is too small and the next size up too heavy/more than I want to spend and still has meh access angles for operation. Decisions decisions.
Regarding using at home when there’s an outage, is the intent to plug various appliances/cords into the two units when the power goes out, or run a single cord from the main panel to the parallel connection unit and power the whole house (with non-critical circuits off) from there?
The latter - I’m going to properly power the house’s electrical panel via the generator. There are two ways to do this - a transfer switch and an interlock switch. The deceptively-named singular transfer switch is a number of external switches that sit between the panel and the circuits, and with the flip of a switch disconnect mains power and connect generator power to that individual circuit.
An interlock switch occupies two individual slots on a conventional split-phase panel ala a 240V breaker and is connected to the generator. A mechanical device prevents both the main breaker and interlock switch from being closed at the same time.
I’m going with an interlock switch since it’s a cheaper one-and-done affair that can be fed 120V or 240V split-phase. Por Ejemplo:
The red plate is a simple sliding mechanical safety that prevents the main breaker (top) and the interlock switch (in positions 1+2) from being closed at the same time. There is a bit more hand-monkeying with an interlock since you’ll want to open all individual circuit breakers before switching to generator power then switch on critical circuits sequentially so as to stay within the limits of your generator’s capacity (and limit startup surge).
Lol, Then there is keeping it running in adverse conditions. I was on a site (data center) today where they lost 3 of 8 genny’s in 1 yard. Ol Murphy likes to poke around some times
