Generator Upgrade

[Geneva Andreotti]

Imaginewaking up in your nice warm trailer after a decent nights rest. The outside temp is a biting 24 degrees. Without getting out of bed, you reach to the key fob on the night stand and start up the generator. No more having to get shoes and a jacket on, open the noisy trailer door letting all that cold air in just to go turn your generator on. You are now ready to ease into the day in your warm trailer and hot cup of coffee. (Here's my favorite Black Rifle Coffee Company flavor when camping)

Major brands Cummins Onan and Kohler also had good reputations, but a lot of people complained about their electronic brains that were expensive to service, and which were not as conducive to self maintenance and troubleshooting.

Next on my list was Fischer Panda, which intrigued me because there was a way to integrate in with a Victron CCGX control panel, and their generators were tiny, quiet, and extremely high-tech. But online forums were filled with stories of Panda generator failures, and people saying that you really needed to treat Fischer Panda generators with extreme TLC to keep them running well over time. And though the Victron integration was geeky cool, Fischer Panda USA told me they had no intention to ever officially support this and I would have to get parts and deal directly with Europe if I wanted that feature. *ugh*

But when I started calling around for pricing and shipping estimates to see what else might fit our schedule, I discovered Citimarine Store in Miami who said they had Northern Lights generators available for immediate shipment, and they quoted me a price (with sound shield) that was not all the much more than we had been quoted for a Phasor. Wow!

The Northern Light M673L3 is half the size and half the weight of our old Westerbeke, and after spending some time crawling around with a tape measure I was able to determine that it would be theoretically possible to install the new generator rotated 90 degrees relative to the old one, freeing up a ton of potential storage space in the process.

The sound shield finally caught up with us in New Smyrna Beach, and one of the body panels had been damaged in shipping. Installing it actually proved to be more challenging than I had imagined, since I actually needed to shift the generator sideways by several inches to get everything to fit.

Overall the new generator without a sound shield is quieter than the old one with, and now that we have the sound shield on the generator can barely be heard over the sound of the salon AC, and overall it is a pretty quiet background noise that is usually easy to forget.

And being able to trust that we have reliable power to let us stay out at anchor or on mooring balls will save us substantially over time too compared to transient marina fees, making the hit not nearly so painful.

Now.. to get that boosting inverter and lithium batteries. That may have to wait until our next cruising season for the stars to align with finding a canvas maker, solar install assistance, shipping availability and replenishing the budget.

The context is a 100% off-grid cabin with two solar panels, a small battery bank, and a 120VAC inverter feeding a few circuits in the house. The generator is used for backup power and to pump water using a 240VAC well pump. Here's the existing setup:

The good news is that your plan with the 30A breaker is feasible, given that you don't have a utility service, which means you aren't subject to the new 230.85 emergency disconnect requirements, which'd require an outdoor disconnect switch or main breaker. However, you'll need a PK2MB hold-down kit for your 30A breaker in order to comply with NEC 408.36(D) (and keep someone from accidentally yanking out a live breaker during maintenance); fortunately, these are not hard to come by.

Per default the generator's efficiency is at 80% of a BuildCraft Stirling Engine, i.e. it consumes the fuel at the same pace a Stirling Engine would, but only outputs 80% of the energy a Stirling Engine would.

Players should be able to upgrade the Generator Upgrader skins as they level. As an example, when a player reaches level 10, they could unlock a Mailbot Uenerator Upgrader skin (that sounds kinda confusing writing it lol), so you would click on a small Mailbot next to the generator to upgrade it; in other words, basically a customizable Upgrade Bot. Below I will have some ideas for levels and their unlocks:

HIPPO Multipower, with input from FOSOV, has developed a 3-stage generator that puts out up to 5kW @ 24 vac in power running off the power plant of the MRZR. At only 70 lbs, the generator fits below the payload area of the vehicle leaving OEM specifications of the area unchanged.

The site is secure.

The ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Background: Prospective studies defining the risk associated with pacemaker or implantable cardioverter-defibrillator replacement surgeries do not exist. These procedures are generally considered low risk despite results from recent retrospective series reporting higher rates.

Methods and results: We prospectively assessed predefined procedure-related complication rates associated with elective pacemaker or implantable cardioverter-defibrillator generator replacements over 6 months of follow-up. Two groups were studied: those without (cohort 1) and those with (cohort 2) a planned transvenous lead addition for replacement or upgrade to a device capable of additional therapies. Complications were adjudicated by an independent events committee. Seventy-two US academic and private practice centers participated. Major complications occurred in 4.0% (95% confidence interval, 2.9 to 5.4) of 1031 cohort 1 patients and 15.3% (95% confidence interval, 12.7 to 18.1) of 713 cohort 2 patients. In both cohorts, major complications were higher with implantable cardioverter-defibrillator compared with pacemaker generator replacements. Complications were highest in patients who had an upgrade to or a revised cardiac resynchronization therapy device (18.7%; 95% confidence interval, 15.1 to 22.6). No periprocedural deaths occurred in either cohort, although 8 later procedure-related deaths occurred in cohort 2. The 6-month infection rates were 1.4% (95% confidence interval, 0.7 to 2.3) and 1.1% (95% confidence interval, 0.5 to 2.2) for cohorts 1 and 2, respectively.

Conclusions: Pacemaker and implantable cardioverter-defibrillator generator replacements are associated with a notable complication risk, particularly those with lead additions. These data support careful decision making before device replacement, when managing device advisories, and when considering upgrades to more complex systems.

If you are a generator author and want to go one step further to make sure your users are always up-to-date, you can use update-notifier from the Yeoman project to greet users with a notification if they run an obsolete version.

I just started playing right after the automation upgrade, and I've been trying to use the hydrogen generator to make us of the electrolyzer's output but I just cannot seem to make this even a little efficient. Even with a steady stream of hydrogen the generator only produces good power when I first set is up then it doesn't even produce enough to power the gas pump and filter to it. I've tried a few different set ups that seem to predate automation upgrade like encasing the pump and electrolyzer in a room. Currently I'm using a peak in my base to collect the hydrogen and set up everything at the top but I end up with a dupe on a hamster wheel to power the pump unless i set up coal or something to power it.

In practice, it's not terribly easy to simply run an Electrolyzer and route all of the Hydrogen it produces to a Hydrogen Generator. I'm sure it can be done, but I like to keep things as compact as possible, and I've settled on this setup:

This machine's total power consumption is 840 W, and with just the one Hydrogen Generator, its maximum power production is only 800 W. In practice, it isn't running 100% of the time, but it's fairly close to 100% uptime. Hypothetically, you can get 896 W of power production by hooking up two Hydrogen Generators, but again, in practice it doesn't really work out that way. There's various reasons for this, and I tried this setup with a two-tile-high chamber, but I've gotten the best results out of what you see here.

In the end, it still has a net impact on power consumption, so I continue to run my other generators off in the distance somewhere. But it costs less on average to run this setup than a single Algae Deoxylizer, and produces more than enough Oxygen to over-pressurize my entire map, so that makes me happy.

You can make a lot more power than guyperfect's setup by taking advantage of oxygen diffusion and valving. An electrolyzer sitting in your base is overpressurized half the time, so you need at least 2 electrolyzers each working only half the time, which costs the same power/water as one ideal electrolyzer. Then, add a valve on your output(oxygen) from your gas filter on the top of your base, set to like 50g/s. Without this your gas pump is working all the time, which is a waste of capacity and power, since it can move 500 g/s and your hydrogen generator only needs 100g/s. Ideally, your gas pump is sitting in hydrogen, pumping 500g/s of hydrogen 20% of the time, which will keep your hydrogen generator going and cut your power from the gas pump and filter by 80%. Theoretically this should make 800 W, and cost 120 W + (240 W + 120 W) * .2 = 192 Watts, leaving you with 608 watts net. your base currently is a bit uneven so you might be catching hydrogen in places for quite a while, which will hurt your power production, and you might need a third electrolyzer to reach 1 ideal electrolyzer equivalent as well. The benefit of guyperfect's setup is that it is compact and with active pumping of oxygen will more easily reach higher average oxygen pressure in your base.

3a8082e126