The generator house is complete, the acoustic panels installed, the exhaust system working, and the autotransformer mounted. We did a quick test run, and the autotransformer is putting out 240 volts as it is supposed to.
The next step was to break down the house by removing the autotransformer and taking out the hinge pins that hold the top and front cover in place. Then the box, lid, and autotransformer were placed in Timmy the Titan’s bed. Next, we used our wheelchair ramp to put the generator in the bed.
My octogenarian father-in-law helped immensely with the loading.
We drove everything down to the studio and set it all up.
After some problems caused by a loose strain relief nut, everything was wired up and ready for testing. All seemed well, so I went back up to the house to relax with a cup of coffee. Except, the coffee (cold brew that I heat up in the microwave) wasn’t hot, just tepid. I tried warming it again, and saw that the microwave would start, then the light would dim and everything would slow down. I went and turned the generator off, hiked back to the house, and the microwave worked fine. That looked like a classic case of an open neutral, where putting a big load on one side of a (US standard) split-phase feed will cause a marked voltage drop.
After yoga class, I realized that the house inverter isn’t just using power from the generator to charge the batteries, but actually passing it through to loads. I thought the inverter would generate the split-phase power and balance it, as it does when running off solar or batteries. Where there’s grid or generator power, however, it simply passes that current along. I had wired the autotransformer to just provide 240 volt single-phase power, so there was no neutral return. Ooops. I hiked back down to the generator and connected the neutral wire from the generator to the 240 volt split-phase neutral line, and all seems to be working as it should.
Alas, the generator starter is still broken, as it was out of the box, and neither Lowe’s nor Generac seems to have any meaningful plan for addressing the problem. At least we won’t end up in the dark while we try to figure this out.
—2p