r/Generator

I am a home owner and I have a grid-tied rooftop SolarEdge system. I live in an suburb area in northern California (a lot of sun). My area's electricity is quite stable and if it had an outage it was normally for only a few hours. However there are still some natural threats, such as winter storms and wild fires, which could damage the infrastructure to the whole region. Because it is rare and I only need keep essentials such as my refrigerator running, I don't want to spend a lot of money. Currently those "solar generators" are quite convenient and in low cost. Is there a way to utilize my rooftop solar panels to recharge a solar generator in case of a long power outage?

BTW, I am kinda handy with an electrical engineering background. I have being thinking going to the roof to run a wire directory from a solar panel (rated 330w), bypassing SolarEdge Optimizer, to feed into a "solar generator". How hard is it? It seems all the solar panel wires are hidden in the tracks. I hope there is a more elegant way anyway.

PS, I am on NEM2.0, so going to commercial solutions, such as Tesla Powerwall, is not attractive to me.

I have a Champion portable generator. It is kept outside with a champion cover, and usually a secondary cover on it.

I went to use it today as we had a power outage and it was very hot and wanted to keep my refrigerator and freezers at the set temperatures.

It started fine. The power cord was plugged into the generator and the outlet going into the main box.
It shut down after about 20 seconds. My initial thought was a fuel supply issue. I have kept the fuel in the on board tank conditioned to avoid the ethanol gunkup.
It would run for 10-30 seconds and shut down.

I disconnected the power cord at the generator, and it ran fine. The generator reported it was uploading 239 volts.

Plug the cord into the outlet feeding the main box and it shuts down.

It seems that the motor is fine,
It seems the generator itself is fine.
It seems that once the load is placed onto the generator by opening up the cord connection to the house it sucks.

As my suggestions is greatly appreciated .

Genmax GM10000XiT inverter generator.... bonded neutral?

I'm very interested in this generator to use with a Generlink transfer switch. I've tried to get any info on if it has a bonded neutral or not. I've even tried contacting the company to no avail.

This is a Sams Club model, but I'd imagine is similar to other Genmax models. It's an open frame inverter generator. Does anyone have any experience with them? Is it a bonded neutral? If so, being open frame, is it easy to unbond?

Thanks for any help

I finally have an update to my smoking Champion generator that I posted about a couple of months ago.

Here's the link to my original post in case you haven't seen it.

After I dropped the unit off at Northern Tool they told me it would be 6-8 weeks until they could look at it. I got a call on August 6th which was just shy of 6 weeks from their mechanic saying that he finally looked at it. Turned out that one of the wires on the main electrical harness had melted pretty badly. He told me that if it was up to him he would replace the whole thing because he had no idea what could have caused the issue. He was able to fix it by replacing that wire and tested it out and it worked. I'm still extremely hesitant to use it. I called Champion and asked that since the tech recommend replacing the unit because he couldn't find what caused it and because it's such a dangerous issue if they would consider replacing it, but they of course said no. I use it connected to a natural gas line on my house, so my thought is that what if I would have had it connected to my house and the wiring caught on fire my entire house could have exploded. Needless to say I won't be buying a Champion generator again.

We live in an area where storms come through often. It’s not uncommon for power to go out for a day, even up to a week. We’ve used smaller portable generators (Champion, Honda) for a number of years but decided to finally upgrade to the whole house. We had to choose between Generac and Kohler, but chose Generac because all of our neighbors were putting them in too. In fact, we all used the best electric/plumbing company in our city that is an official distributor. 2 months later and the next big storm comes in and brings down the power for days. Within 2 days, three of the 4 Generac generators had catastrophic failure. Of those 3, 2 can be fixed with extensive parts repair, while the other one needs fully replaced. Ours just needs parts replaced (luckily), but for the astronomical price I paid to have this all put in, it shouldn’t have happened in the first place.
Does this seem unusual to anyone here? I am new to whole home generators, but this seems beyond unacceptable.

I am looking for a whole home solution. I have NG and a pretty easy going crawlspace, so electrical/gas work should be straight forward. Obviously I'll need to get some quotes, but I was wondering what you all thought would be rough estimate for the cost difference between a standby solution and a portable solution.

I have a smaller 1500sqft home with a single 2.5T AC and a gas furnace (only gas appliance, everything else is electric). My electric panel is out back, we have no garage, and I am a single parent of toddlers. I'm not really interested in finagling breakers/appliances/devices to try and get by with a 4kw generator or anything. I don't mind going out in the storm to hook stuff up and let it rip though.

If I were to get equivalent sized generators in either situation, does anyone have a rough estimate on the cost difference between an installed standby system vs a portable w/ gas/electrical hookups? I'm in central NC fwiw.

Other than adding up all my systems individually, is there any way for me to determine my whole home wattage needs? I have a smart meter from the utility, think they'd give me or tell me my peak wattage use? Is there some rough rule of thumb? We don't have anything crazy at our house, just standard run of the mill stuff and no specialty devices or anything.

I know I need the quotes, and those are coming, but finding time to get those done is difficult for me, so I'm hoping to just get some rough ideas on to be focusing on. Thanks for the help!

Hi redditors, I have a small home (650 sq ft) and during the winter sometimes lose power for a few days. It doesnt happen often but it is too cold in the middle of winter to go days without power. I dont know much about generators since Ive never had one before. What would be the best option for this size house, that will be reliable but also not cost a ton. Any insight is very appreciated. Edit: I use electric (2 mini spilts) for heating and cooling

Hi guys. I just joined this sub. I need help...plz. My head is spinning.

I'm trying to hook up a Yamaha EF6300ISDE to my breaker panel (I live in a very rural area and the power goes out frequently).

Watched some vids on how to hook this up and they all say when hooking it to house power, it should be "floating" ground so you don't create a loop. (Internet can't be wrong....right?)

As far as I can tell, this generator is a "Bonded" generator. Says right on the panel "Neutral bonded to frame".

I have the breakers, interlock, and cable installed.
But I don't want to eff my generator.

Anybody accomplish this with this particular (or similar) gen? I see guys disconnecting wires all willy-nilly, but I don't want to go there unless I know specifically what I'm looking for...
Do I need to move wires inside the unit? It'll mainly be used for backup power, hooked to the panel in case of brownout/blackout.

Thank you.

Hello i have a Genmax 9000iedc inverter generator.

We've only used it a couple times after buying it used, worked fine for like 6-8 hours but now it seems like there's a fuel blockage or something.

For one - i can't put more gas in, and i know it isn't full

Two - it runs for like 30 or so minutes before sputtering out and it can't run at full electric capacity

Three - i just did oil change so its not that

Four - the couple that had it before us might've had it sitting with fuel in it for awhile and i didn't pump it before hand, so could that old fuel be the culprit?

Would pumping the fuel out and draining the carburetor be a good first step towards diagnosing or fixing?

I need HELP

So the outage last week wrecked us, lost basically all the food in the fridge and freezer, no way to run the sump pump either which almost flooded the basement. Been putting off buying a generator for like 2 years cause the prices scared me off, but this was the final straw.

Went down a rabbit hole comparing portable vs inverter vs whole-home standby, way more to it than I expected honestly (starting watts vs running watts almost got me, nearly bought something underpowered for the fridge + sump pump + a few lights).

Ended up leaning toward an inverter generator since I didn't want to deal with a full standby install and permits, but still torn.

For anyone who's been through this, was whole-home standby worth the extra cost over portable/inverter? And any brands you'd actually avoid? Trying to figure out if I should've just spent more upfront instead of hunting for a mid-range one.

Thinking about buying this but would like to credible reviews or insight. This is a big purchase for us and want to make sure we aren’t setting ourselves up for failure. I can’t go and spend $1000 on something right now, but just trying to get ahead of whatever El Niño has in store for us in Houston and this seems like the best option that I can find. $700 and comes with a solar panel. Thoughts? Advice?

Hey All,
My neighbor gave me this generator because it wouldn’t start and they didn’t feel like playing with it. So far I have drained the fuel and replaced with good fuel, cleaned the carburetor and replaced the spark plug but I am still getting nothing. Admittedly engines are not my thing but I felt like tinkering with something. Any thoughts on what the issue may be or what I am doing wrong? I am not even getting the slightest bit of sign that it is starting to go. To knock out a few obvious ones, Yes, the switch is on and fuel line open, I have tried with choke on and without.
TIA.

Just got through a 7 day blackout due to nasty tornados in the midwest. My Westinghouse Wgen5300s was a champ, but I put it through about 120 hours of service during this week. At the start of the week it showed a frequency of about F61.2~, now at the end its running at F64.5~. I only happened to notice after I did an oil change. Should I be looking at adjusting the governor or something else? And if so, how do I do it on this model?

I'm having a "discussion" with the authorized installer of my Kohler 26kw generator. I want to run an ethernet cable to the unit, but the installer did not run any low voltage conduit to the unit. I believe it's all in the electrical conduit between the generator and the transfer switch. I'm not an electrician. Can someone point me to specific documentation from Kohler stating that separate conduit should have been run for the low voltage wiring? Alternatively, I've been led to believe there are additional knock-outs on the rear of the generator, but I don't see them. Are they on the back panel, underneath, or non-existant?

I will premise this with a "I know its probably more complicated than it needs to be, but I am curious anyways". I currently own entirely too many portable generators. All rated between 6500 watts & 9500 watts.... I was looking into how to use 2 of them in parallel to provide emergency power for my entire house during outages and it would appear that without them being Invertor Generators this is basically a no go. Which makes sense with the possibility of phasing being off a few degrees.

Is there anyway to hook these up and load balance between them without having to basically split my house in half so if their phasing is off a little its not shared on the same circuits?

We have reached the end of my electrical knowledge with this one...

Does a Phase Matching circuit/box/whatever even exist? Watching some videos from Chris Boden would tell me this was a dumb question...but I am asking anyways.

Can I put the power from each generator into their own invertor that is made for parallel operation, then run the house from there? This option also allows me to add batteries down the road to act as a UPS (which is tempting considering how often we lose power over the year).

Any insight is greatly appreciated. Even if I can't get a solution, the added knowledge will be helpful!

Thank You.