[TenTec] emergency power

[Kim Elmore]

We planned our house with a standby generator in mind. We're on a 
well and my wife will have horses; we need to be able to water the 
animals under all conditions. So, we have a 13 kW natural gas-fueled, 
air-cooled Guardian generator that starts automatically 10 s after a 
power failure. It feeds the house through a manual transfer switch, 
so transfer to generator power is not automatic. The generator came 
with its own auto transfer panel that will feed 9 circuits, good for 
60 A. But, we have 400 A service at the house and 20-something 
separate circuits. I also didn't want to lock myself into a permanent 
subset of active circuits while on emergency power.

These generators are not terribly expensive -- a bit over $3000 -- 
and will run on either natural gas or propane (modification needed 
for propane). It has one minor problem in that during hot weather, 
cooling air circulation around the internal circuit breaker is 
inadequate and so well below full load, the circuit breaker will 
thermally trip. However, if I leave the top open a bit enough cooling 
air circulates that the circuit breaker will run cool at a full load 
indefinitely. The air-cooled versions are not reated for continuous 
duty (as in 24/7/365). If that need is anticipated, a step up to a 
liquid-cooled version is needed, which is quite a bit more expensive.

Kim N5OP

P.S.: Yes, it's grounded properly to the AC mains :)

At 08:53 PM 3/7/2007, you wrote:
>Again thanks for all the input .  I am not trained or have 
>experience in this stuff and all your information has given me a 
>very good start to the project.   John Kb2huk
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