Generator Blog

One Christmas gift worth considering is an emergency generator for use at a camp or summer cottage or at home in case of a power failure. And yes, power failures during the winter months happen, but usually for only a few hours, although last year there were areas in both Nova Scotia and New Brunswick where residents were without power for several days.

Yet, many buy a generator without giving due consideration to all the factors involved. Often a generator is purchased that has a much higher wattage rating than needed and is also heavier, and thus harder to transport.

Gas on hand and gas consumption of the generator is a key consideration. An emergency generator rated at 6,000 watts will use about 2.5 litres of gas per hour in running at half load and close to four litres per hour when running at full load. Yet a generator rated for 2,500 watts will use only about one litre per hour at full load.

These ratings will vary depending on the manufacturer and the motor used, but gives an idea of what to expect.

In view of this, a generator of 2,000 to 2,500 watts should be considered, and the keeping on hand of three or more 10- to 20-litre containers of gas in a shed during the winter months. Gas more than a month old should go into your vehicle’s gas tank and the container refilled with fresh gas, although many choose to add a gas stabilizer to the gas that will allow gasoline to be kept for three months or more without deteriorating.

For reasons of safety, a gas-powered generator must only be run outside in the open air, thus the following suggestions.

In addition to the generator, one should buy a heavy duty power extension cord rated at 20 amps or more. Ideally, to get the generator power into the house, the homeowner should have an electrician install a suitable male electrical receptacle on the outside wall of the house, and an outlet on the inside wall so one can plug the generator’s extension cord into the outside receptacle, and have the power available at the inside outlet.

Opening a window far enough to allow the power cord in also works, but requires a blanket or towels to block off the open part of the window so as to prevent heat loss.

Do not connect to the electrical wiring in the house. Instead, run a heavy duty extension cord inside the house to where the power is needed. And yes, almost 75 per cent of N.B. residents heat their homes with electricity, but that’s on a separate 220-volt system that would require a big and expensive generator to operate. For heat, a standard portable ceramic electric heater rated at 1,500 watts is recommended, as it will heat an area of up to 400 square feet. That 400-square-foot area can be a living room 20 feet by 20 feet in size. In case of a power failure during sub-zero temperatures, the homeowner should quickly decide which room they are going to camp in as the temperature drops within the house.

Note that pellet stoves in full operation usually draw only about 300 watts, one more reason to consider a pellet stove. For light, a 60 or 100-watt incandescent light bulb, or a compact fluorescent light bulb of 13 or 23 watts in a floor or table lamp will be sufficient. Most microwave ovens are rated at between 700 and 1,400 watts. While powering the microwave to heat a bowl of canned soup, or water for coffee, turn off the electric heater so as to keep the load on the generator at less than 1,800 watts. When starting up the microwave there is a surge which requires more wattage than normal. Yet, most 2,000-watt (2KW) generators should handle this if that is all that is being powered by the generator.

Some generators will run a computer, TV, or other electronic devices, and some will not. If you have the need, ask before buying. Always keep a flashlight and spare batteries on hand, required in order to see to start the generator and set things up if the power failure occurs at night. To keep track of what’s happening news-wise, buy a battery-powered radio and spare batteries.

So now we have heat, light, and a source of hot food. Nor is it usually necessary to run the generator all the time. Thus, 30 to 40 litres of gas should be good for about two days, at which point one can usually scrounge gas from a neighbour or the next town over that still has power. As for water pipes freezing, running a dribble of water from each tap in the unheated part of the house and flushing the toilet once in a while will bring water at ground temperature (at about 45 degrees F, if I remember correctly) into the pipes and thus protect the pipes from freezing. That’s provided you are on town or city water and the system is still working.

As for the larger generator needed to power a rural deep-well pump, sump pump and/or an oil or gas furnace, some all at the same time, best bet is to consult with an electrician well in advance so as to determine how many amps of power your particular well pump, sump pump or furnace actually draws, and the generator wattage needed. Separate from your main electrical circuit breaker panel one also needs to have an electrical panel installed that contains the power cables routed to these units, and a transfer switch to switch to generator power. This is required so as to prevent the generator from feeding its electricity back down the power line coming into the house.

As previously mentioned, always run a gas-powered generator outside in the open air. Case in point, a camp owner finding that a porcupine had taken up residence inside an old woodshed and would not leave despite prodding with a stick. A small gas-powered generator was started up and put in the shed with the idea that the noise and the exhaust fumes would soon drive the critter out. Three hours later, the critter still had not left, but then an inspection found that the porcupine, along with two previously unseen others, were now dead due to asphyxiation.

Not the original intention, but a lesson well and truly demonstrated as to why one should never, ever run a gas motor in an enclosed area where people are present.

At Lakeland Electric, Generator 5 was once synonymous with frustration, failure and even fire. It was considered a $165 million mistake.

Lakeland Electric's Unit 5 generator.

But Unit 5, the utility’s big, 360-megawatt combined cycle natural gas generator, has done a U-turn. It has gone from the outhouse to the penthouse among Lakeland Electric’s fleet of generators.

“Unit 5 has gone from worst to first,” said Tony Candales, a utility assistant general manager whose main job is to see that Lakeland Electric’s generators hum along.

That’s just what Unit 5 is doing, and it has been for more than a year. At one point during the past year, it worked continuously for 82 days.

In the 2009 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, Unit 5 was unavailable for service because of mechanical failure for just five days. That is by far the best performance since it went online in 2002.

The worst year for failure was 2006, when it was down with mechanical problems for 81 days.

It’s not unusual for generators to take a while to operate properly. But Unit 5, which was serial No. 1 of it’s kind, and it took longer than most and had a variety of problems, including:

The generator three times caught fire as Lakeland Electric and its manufacturer, Siemens, tried in vain to get it rolling at the turn of the century.

In summer 2005, Unit 5 went down for a few months with a rusted, broken rotor bolt. The cost to repair it and buy replacement power was $7 million.

In 2006, it was down for a month because a rotor blade went awry and damaged hundreds of other blades. The blades were a bit out of whack, and that problem was magnified by the high-speed at which the rotors spin. The blades had to be redesigned.

In 2008, insulation wore off thousands of copper wire windings. The wire is used to create a magnetic field, one of the essential elements of producing electricity. The fix was $2.5 million.

At one point, Candales said, things were so iffy with Unit 5 that workers used to cross their fingers when they fired it up.

It was always something.

Candales said that rather than fixing problems in the generator on a case-by-case basis, Unit 5 needed a two-month time out, during which a head-to-toe analysis of the machine - and how it was used - was undertaken.

With new wiring, better rotors, a two dehumidifiers to prevent rusting and a better understanding of the generator, it has been on a roll for more than a year. Lakeland Electric now makes every effort to keep Unit 5 running or shut down, rather than stopping and starting it repeatedly.

Candales praises Lakeland Electric power plant workers also for the success of Unit 5.

Mayor-elect Gow Fields said the earlier problems and eventual first-string status of Unit 5 remind him of the same thing Lakeland Electric went through with Unit 3, its 365-megawatt coal-fired generator.

The difference between Unit 3 and 5 is that Orlando owns 40 percent of Unit 3 while Lakeland Electric owns all of Unit 5.

“The two situations, early on, were a lot alike,” Fields said. “Both machines were considered dogs at one point in time.”

Current Applications
Many hydrogen generators that use water electrolysis technology are sold to the public as part of fuel efficiency systems to be installed in private vehicles. An ultra-high purity hydrogen generator that works on the water electrolysis system is used in medical and research fields to produce high purity hydrogen for gas chromatography and other uses. Extraction and reformation generators tend to be used in fueling stations for hydrogen cars (they extract the hydrogen from natural gas stored at the stations) and in hydrogen fuel cells that are installed in hybrid vehicles that combine the cell with a conventional combustion engine.
Potential Applications
Many countries are aggressively pursuing the development of hydrogen generator technology as they recognize that hydrogen generators could radically reduce the amount of toxic emissions released into the atmosphere if systems were placed in all vehicles, whether as hydrogen fuel cells in a hybrid car or as additional supports to fuel efficiency in a standard car, and hydrogen generators were added to their country’s power grids. The use of hydrogen generators in vehicles could drastically reduce dependence on fossil fuels. That a hydrogen generator can be easily built out of everyday items and produce enough electricity and H2 gas to power houses, vehicles and other applications could change the nature of the global economy by making electricity and power affordable and available to everyone, on or off established power grids. Both the Energy Information Administration of the U.S. Government and the National Research Council of Canada maintain websites to promote and document their efforts into seeing their technology brought into its full use within the next 20 years. Both countries support research to release the potential ability of a hydrogen generator to “recycle” chemicals and use plain water as a source for energy and make it a source for endless, renewable electricity.

Hydrogen generators may either be generators that are powered by hydrogen or ones that make hydrogen. A generator that is powered by hydrogen will use the gas or a hydrogen fuel cell to generate electricity for use by the generator. A generator that produces hydrogen will do so through either by using electrolysis processing or water, or the extraction and reformation of pure hydrogen from a hydrogen rich chemical such as sodium borohydride, ammonia, methanol or gasoline. The water electrolysis method produces little waste to be disposed o,f while the extraction and reformation process creates numerous byproducts that must be disposed of or recycled through some other process.

Whether the hydrogen generator is using water or extracting and reforming hydrogen from other chemicals, the basic principal of the generator remains the same. The source liquid or chemical is placed in a container with two metal plates. The plates are then “charged” (either through the introduction of electricity or through a chemical reaction) causing the elements of the source to separate into H2 and a byproduct that is not used by the generator. The H2 is then removed from the container.