Half useful. And that half is the less useful half. I like the guys to kill the power and see the whole thing work a couple of times a year. They are always reticent to do so. “Something might not work!”
From: Mike Hammett via Af Sent: Monday, October 27, 2014 7:50 AM To: af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Generator question How useful is a test run without load? ----- Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions http://www.ics-il.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: "Chuck McCown via Af" <af@afmug.com> To: af@afmug.com Sent: Monday, October 27, 2014 8:48:34 AM Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Generator question Yeahbut, your tests are generally once a week for 15 minutes, without load. You might burn a gallon of fuel. If you have a 1500 gallon tank, that is a lot of weeks (28 years...) worth of test runs. Even a 500 gallon tank would last almost 10 years on test runs along. Yes, they come along and top it off a couple of times a year but that does not do much to dilute the bad fuel with new. There are microbes that eat diesel. Not sure if the additives kill them completely or not. It must work because lots of large telecom sites have diesel tanks. I have always been LP or NG if I could get it. From: Mike Hammett via Af Sent: Monday, October 27, 2014 7:36 AM To: af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Generator question I believe they make treatments to reduce the "staleness" of stored diesel. You'll also be burning some during your regularly scheduled load tests as well, right? *nudge* ;-) ----- Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions http://www.ics-il.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: "Chuck McCown via Af" <af@afmug.com> To: af@afmug.com Sent: Monday, October 27, 2014 8:28:57 AM Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Generator question I dislike diesel due to the inevitable mess and the fact it goes stale, has cold weather issues etc. If the disaster is bad enough to shut off the NG pipes, I think I don't want to be at work. -----Original Message----- From: Rex-List Account via Af Sent: Sunday, October 26, 2014 5:32 PM To: af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Generator question Just to throw another curve into your thinking - what is your reasoning on the generator? Disaster recovery? Frequent power outages due to storms and such? As a thirty plus year vet at a phone company and a twenty five plus year vet on the fire department let me give you this to ponder. If it is for frequent power outages due to electrical storms, ice, and/or poor power lines then NG is fine. However it has been my experience that in disaster scenarios like earthquakes (ok I haven't actually seen this one) severe storms/tornadoes (I have seen way too many of these) then one of the first things the fire department does is shut down the natural gas pipelines. Too many houses destroyed and the possibilities of way too many leaks. I personally would go with diesel fuel. Almost always available - can be easily trucked in. LP can be hard to source and price fluctuates in the winter. There is always a farmer or construction company around with diesel. NG is defiantly more convenient, but in a true disaster situation it may not be available. Just my two cents worth. Rex -----Original Message----- From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of George Skorup (Cyber Broadcasting) via Af Sent: Sunday, October 26, 2014 4:17 PM To: Animal Farm Subject: [AFMUG] Generator question So I have a unique situation at our office. We're looking at a Generac QuietSource 22 or 30kW running on NG. I'm not dead set on that, but those are very nice and quiet 1800RPM. And the problem is, our building is really old and is split in half with two separate 240 services coming in. And I do have an old empty 1-1/4" conduit between the two utility closets. The two services is actually nice because a lot of times, one side will have power when the other doesn't. One comes from the north, the other from the south. There's no way we can rewire and combine everything into one service feed. I'm trying to wrap my mind around how to do something like two auto-transfer switches on one generator. I have critical stuff to run on both sides. Probably need a qualified electrician or engineer, but I thought I'd ask here for suggestions before we go down that road and pay someone to come up with something that I most likely wouldn't like.
