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Posted By: travistydesigns Commercial Generator Frustrations? - 06/21/11 04:16 PM
I'm doing some research on problems that exist with Commercial Gensets. Wondering if you have any horror stories you'd like to share with me about using them?
Ever been hurt by one? Or simply frustrated? mad

What don't you like about the way they are configured now? What works? What doesn't?

Do you ever clean them? Is it a hastle?
How's the fluid management? Hard to fill?
How about maintenance? Are there parts of the Genset that you have to access frequently that are hard to get to?

Post back and tell me your story. It could have an impact on the way that Commercial Generators are designed in the future...and eventually make the task of using them much easier.

Thanks!
Posted By: LarryC Re: Commercial Generator Frustrations? - 06/21/11 07:17 PM
1) What size range are you asking about? Tens or hundreds of KW or tens of MW?

2) Fuel types?

3) Stationary, portable, skid mounted, truck mounted?

4) Emergency power, standby power, backup power, field power?

5) Single phase, 3 phase, switchable?

6) 60 Hz, 50 Hz, DC, other?


Who do you represent/work for?
Let's say in the range of 5kw up to 300kw.
Posted By: LarryC Re: Commercial Generator Frustrations? - 06/21/11 07:26 PM
When I used to service gennys back in the '90s, the skid mounted systems with the engine oil drain plug 4 inches above the ground made changing oil messy. I was always cleaning up oil stains after changing the oil.
Thanks LarryC!
To answer the rest of your questions:
Fuel types: All
Mounting: All
Power type: Standby or Backup
Phases: All
Hz: Any

Not to quote Tron, I represent the users. That's how design research works. I'm looking for interaction experiences, you posted a good example of one.

Anyone else got more?
Posted By: twh Re: Commercial Generator Frustrations? - 06/22/11 04:04 AM
I'm glad someone asked:
- the drawings showing the place where the wiring should be brought under the generator were wrong
- the supplier gave us the delivery time but neglected tell the delivery company that we had a crane waiting, so he took care of other business first.
- the supplier sent the keys to the customer's head office, in a different city
- the schematics for the controls were wrong
- the instructions said that installation without the supplied shims would void the warranty on the fuel tank, but the shims weren't supplied
- no training for the customer on use or maintenance of the generator or transfer switch
- the transfer switch connection box for three parallel runs (9 total) of 500kcm cable was was very small
- the control connections in the transfer switch, to start the generator, had to be wired internally
- the control fuses in the transfer switch were blocked by the power cables
- the construction documents neglected to mention that the wires to start the generator had to be in a separate cable
- the fire alarm relays in the generator had the connection points for the end-of-line resisters too far apart for the resistor leads to reach
- the supplier neglected to tell the owner that diesel has a shelf life, so the 24 hour fuel tank can't be filled
- it takes two people, an 8 foot ladder and a funnel with a 4 foot hose to fill the radiator after a leak

As a couple design notes
- these machines are noisy even with the added intake muffler and should't be placed near noise-sensitive areas
- diesel exhaust has a little odor to it and shouldn't be near a make-up-air unit

There is no sight as depressing as a 4 foot wide by 2 foot high enclosure with 36 x 500kcm cables sticking out the front. It's nice to turn something like that over to a co-worker to terminate.
twh, great insight! I can imagine how frustrating dealing with filling a radiator could be, especially at a time when its leaking of has overheated.

Let's keep this ball rolling. What else gives you grief when maintaining or servicing these Gensets?
Posted By: HotLine1 Re: Commercial Generator Frustrations? - 06/22/11 08:48 PM
Luckly for me as an EC, all the gensets I dealt with were rental units, ranging from 125KW, to 2MW.

Maintenance was by gen techs. I replaced a few filters (fuel) on the 275-450 kw units with no issues that I can recall.

As an AHJ now, with stationary units, I see some of the horrors that are discussed above.
HotLine1 (John), you mention that the fuel filter replacement didn't have any issues, what about the oil filters?
When changing either (oil of fuel filters), were there any issues that came up with things like heat, ability to reach the filter, etc.? Did you need a wrench or is it like a car filter (with the rubberized grip) where you can do it by hand?

I appreciate everyone's participation. Research like this is done to hear the voice of the people who actually use these products. If any of you have any additional stories to share, please feel free!
Any input helps, the more you have to say the better!

Thanks again!
Posted By: HotLine1 Re: Commercial Generator Frustrations? - 06/23/11 01:16 AM
Travis:
Fuel filter required a strap wrench to loosen, and then 'by hand' with gloves on. Yes, it was warm in there. There was 'bad' diesel in the onboard tank, and we were running the gennie from an aux. tank while we drained & cleaned the onboard tank. (Gen techs took care of that in AM) Total down time was <10 min.

Access to fuel filter was cake. I should add that all the units on site then were from one mfg., and the techs were factory guys. One of the 2 MW units had a coolant failure, caused by metal fatigue which let a few fan blades fly, puncturing the radiator. Gen shut down on hi-temp in <15 seconds. That was a catastropic failure. Solved by doing a 3AM swap out to a 'spare' 2 MW on site. Planning ahead for any disaster paid off!

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
Posted By: Vindiceptor Re: Commercial Generator Frustrations? - 06/23/11 08:08 PM

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!
Posted By: HotLine1 Re: Commercial Generator Frustrations? - 06/23/11 11:55 PM
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.
Posted By: Vindiceptor Re: Commercial Generator Frustrations? - 06/24/11 12:06 AM

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).
Posted By: HotLine1 Re: Commercial Generator Frustrations? - 06/24/11 01:08 AM
Vin:

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

Originally Posted by travistydesigns
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 .,

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
Posted By: jdevlin Re: Commercial Generator Frustrations? - 06/27/11 06:37 PM
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?
Posted By: LarryC Re: Commercial Generator Frustrations? - 06/27/11 08:11 PM
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.
Posted By: Tesla Re: Commercial Generator Frustrations? - 06/28/11 08:49 AM
EVERY gen-set I've ever had to hook-up used a circuit to pre-warm/ always keep warm the generator's oil and block.

Coming up to operating temps took virtually no time at all -- ever....

It was established that the gen-sets would be tested -- for real -- during the off hours -- i.e. the weekend by security -- by throwing a single double throw breaker.

No additional 'ttrick' loading gear was necessary.

As for engine efficiency ... no one gave a dang....

Since the gen-set was a freakish -- rare eventuality.

Some gen-sets were nat-gas powered -- but REAL emergency power was always diesel fueled. In the event of an earthquake - forget about pipes!

Posted By: twh Re: Commercial Generator Frustrations? - 06/28/11 12:41 PM
Quote
Do you think that if this information was readily available, users would stop actually doing scheduled maintenance because the system reads 'ok'?
The testing procedure depends on who makes the rules and who does the work. A maintenance person making the rules doesn't have authority to shut down operations to do a live test and won't get paid overtime to do the test after hours. However, a maintenance manager who has a management level worker who doesn't get paid extra for call-ins, might (and did) make a rule that a live test be carried out before regular hours, weekly, for one hour. What is predictable is when the generator doesn't work, the maintenance log will show the system said it was okay.
Posted By: jdevlin Re: Commercial Generator Frustrations? - 06/29/11 04:36 PM
Not looking for anything. Just indicating what we do weekly and monthly to maintain our units.

You also note our units are rated for standby power and not rated life and safety. I believe L&F units must be run once a week for 15 minutes.
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