ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Commercial Generator Frustrations?

Travis.,

I have plenty experncie with both Gaz et Diesel units I know you are looking for some way to make it easier for us to work on it.

I have few horrour events some are funny but majorty are hair rasing events.

First one was a engine failure due faulty gaz reguatour { it is LPGaz and it supposed to inject in the intake manfold in vapour mode somehow it was dumping in liquid instead of vapour and blew the hole in the pistion of that engine cost to rebuilt it was over 25,000 Euros. { that was 1.5 Megawatts Gaz unit }

I will post more down the road.

Merci.
Marc

I've not had or heard of too many issues with them commercially, but we rarely install anything smaller than 300kW-2MW.

We did have a 1MW unit self destruct on initial startup when the governor failed.

The only other event I can remember was a need to provide a remote indicator when the battery charger lost power after some nitwit turned off the breaker serving the charger and the generator failed to come online during an outage. Luckily it was just a 500kW unit for a large well pump and one of our guys was able to get close enough to jumpstart it from his truck. Having the ability to incorporate the monitoring of the charging system and/or the battery status in the standard remote annunciator panel would have prevented this.

Vindiceptor, you've touched on an interesting concept in your last part about remote monitoring. Is there anything else that would be of great importance to monitor remotely (fuel levels, temp, etc.) that the ATS doesn't do automatically?

frenchelectrician, was that gas regulator able to switch back and forth from liquid to gas or was it simply faulty? I'd love to hear some more stories.

Anyone else have any stories of interaction?
How about cleaning, I hear that rodents can sometimes be an issue, anything else?
I'm also curious about how people interact with the housings, do they ever limit the accessibility to any part of the engine or generator?

Thanks again!

travis:

ALL the permanent gensets in the Twp I work in are locked; all compartments. Some are behind chain link fence with locked gates. The transfer switches are also locked. Qualified persons only.

The units I used as an EC remained closed and locked when they were in areas that had ANY access by unauthorized people. That included gen powered light towers also. The 3 to 10 KW portable type units were out of public areas, or considered 'safed off'.

Yes, I know that 'locking' the access panels and doors may be considered a PITA, but it was mandatory by my rule as the EC, both on the golf tournaments and on other jobs. The golf tournaments had qualified electricians and/or gen techs on site 24/7. BTW, most of the 'rental gens' use a common key.

Remote monitoring of the 1-2 MW units was used back in '05, along with select 750KW units, back to my site trailer PC. I knew about the 2MW failure within minutes via PC generated call to my cell phone.

Most of the remote annunciators I've seen monitor all of the regular engine functions as well as the generator functions when the unit is in operation, but none of them pay any attention to the battery and the battery charger when it's static (not that I've seen anyway).

Vin:

Correct, all the monitoring was functional while units were operating. Fail' required a manual reset of the NO contact.

Travis .,

C'est a straight vapour regulator and the cuprit was a diagram busted that how the engine got damaged { it supposed to prevent liquid Propané going to the intake manfold }

Now for mantanice issue some of the area I have ran into few have very poor design with the layout espcally when the time to do the major repairs this part is very true with vee type engines you need at least a meter ( about 3 foot ) apart between the engines but the more the better it get so we can able get into inside the engine and pull the piston et liner as need to.

The most common cuprit with diesel primemovers is wet stacking which they run the diesel primemovers unloaded or light loaded and what happend that the exhaust is not hot engough to burn off any oil or disulated fuel/oil thru the exhaust and it can accouming in the muffer and by time you put a full load on the engine either actual emergecy or load test one of the two will light up the exhaust and some case it can destory engine once the muffer get hot enough I have went thru quite few time so it become a thumb of rules with larger engines { over 750 KW class or larger ) is remove the muffer if possible so you will not get serious flame thrower.

That can do wonderfull damage with it.

The other curpit is starting battery they { mantiancie personalles } not alway check the battery level until time to start the primemover result poor starting or fail to start { the larger one will start with air instead of electrique battery supply } and from time to time check the fuel supply to make sure they are clean that is one of few common service call I get from time to time.

Merci,.
Marc

Three 750 Kw units here on three separate buildings. Coordinate the service but do not do actual service work.
Once a week we inspect and verify battery voltages, block heaters on, battery maintainer on, switch in auto and general inspecton.
Once a month we start them up and run for 5 minutes.
Once a quater if no power failures we do a transfer test and run the building for an hour.

Quaterly we have service come in an do PMs including oil samples and battery testing.

Once a year we have service come in and run a two hour 80% load test on each unit.

Also order fuel when required and monitor operations during power failures.

jdevlin, so you're looking for feedback to be integrated on the readout screen (i.e. fuel levels, battery charge, etc.)? Having had experience with generators, would you potentially invest in one that gave detailed feedback so as to make maintenance/operations more precise and easier to troubleshoot?

Everyone, is jdevlin on to something with the ability to monitor fuel levels, battery charge, etc. which may or may not be available currently?

Do you think that if this information was readily available, users would stop actually doing scheduled maintenance because the system reads 'ok'? More-so, if that became a behavioral trend, would it make sense to have the scheduled test run (aka exercising the genset, a weekly maintenance task on most generators) act as a diagnostic test which then displayed generator stats?

These questions are mostly hypothetical, but research does show that many users of commercial gensets tend to make their own 'formulas for maintenance' rather than following the manuals for the genset. Is this behavior simply precaution, or are the manual's that come with these generators not accurate in the field?

Are there ways in which the makers of the generators could make regular maintenance easier?

Thoughts?

For a diesel engine, Pros and Cons to start up and run unloaded for 5 or 15 minutes?

Pros: Verify engine can start. Cooling system might come up to temperature. Oil might come up to temperature. Exercise mechanical system. Exercise electrical components.

Cons: Adds to unburnt fuel load in exhaust system. DOES NOT verify system can run under load. Does not check electrical output under load. Does not exercise transfer switch.

POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS?

Field accessable connections for electrical load bank. Built in engine and generator controls to allow online paralleling to building or utility load. Built in load bank.

Response to travistydesigns:

Would measuring engine parameters including fuel consumption vs. output be used as a diagnostic measure of generator set condition? Perhaps something like the current diagnostic port on modern vehicles.