Power loss

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gar

Senior Member
Location
Ann Arbor, Michigan
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EE
230228-0824 EST

My power has been off for a week now. No information on the origin of the problem. A line is down several doors from me. No effort to do anything about this line. Thus, there is some greater problem closer to or at the substation.

I am on a delta distribution source, however, at the sub-station it is probably fed from a wye secondary source. My 240 V line-to-line is presently generally reading 40 to 80 V. I did not take look at all the homes on my block, but I don't believe any had substantial power other than the 3 or 4 of us with generators. There are about 28 homes on my block. The time to restore my power seems to imply a transformer problem. Anyone on my block can afford to have their own generator.

Very many common electrical customers seem to think there should never be a power outage, and take their anger out on DTE. I believe DTE had about 400,000 customers without power, and now they are down to possibly 50,000.

It is my opinion that many more people should have some limited amount of backup power available for emergencies. This may be even more important in the future. The power grid is too easily disrupted if an enemy decides to cause us problems. This also means one needs a fair amount of on site energy storage. Getting a lot of distributed solar and wind generation spacially distributed is needed to protect our country.

I have found my 5 kW generator to be sufficient for my emergency purposes. But I would prefer an 1800 RPM unit, and a 10 to 15 gallon tank in place of the 5 gallon unit. If you do not have natural gas available, then you are in big trouble from a cost perspective, and are in a north area. So my cost per day using the generator is about $ 40 to 50 for moderately low electrical usage.

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The other morning I saw there were 600K houses without power in Michigan. So yeah, it might take a while to restore power to everyone.

My sister lives near Detroit, and this is the second time this year she has had power lines on the ground smoking or arcing. (This time it was the neighbors back yard, last time it was her back yard.)

Both times I believe it took the POCO more than a day just to respond to dangerous, live power lines laying on the ground.

This time I noticed in the photo she posted that the Fire Department Truck was there, but I have no idea what they could have done except keep people away. And I'm sure they couldn't camp out a couple of days waiting for the POCO to come.

That is a surprising amount of gas to run a small generator - I wonder if there are more efficient generators available? But I'm guessing if you don't have natural gas, you are having to run electric heat?
 
Small gasoline generators are horribly inefficient. A 5KW unit will burn about 3 quarts per hour. That comes out to roughly 20% efficient.
 
If you're using a fraction of the rated output, an inverter generator will be somewhat more efficient because the engine doesn't always have to run at a synchronous speed like a normal generator. And as a result it can also be less noisy in most situations. A downside is that they typically don't have quite the peak current capability that the inertia of a spinning rotor will provide.

A couple years ago I got a new boiler along with two Grundfos Alpha circulating pumps that use electronically commutated motors. The pumps are surprisingly efficient, and they each rarely draw more than 20W after starting. I haven't tried it, but I suspect I could run the heating system for several hours from an inverter powered by a couple of deep cycle 12V batteries.
 
230228-1654 EST

steve66;

I have natural gas for heat, hot water, and cooking. If I did not have this gas supply my portable electric generation costs would be huge.

If I did not have natural gas I would have probably had a propane powered generator.

Note that when running a gasoline powered generator at less than something near full load the efficiency is going to be poorer than full load. If the generator had a lot more rotating inertia, then I could get by with a smaller unit. Still the Honda 5 kW is a good balance. In a life time one does not need the generator very often.

It is now about a week that I have been on generator power. No useful information exists as to when I will see power restored. My guess is there is a substation transformer problem.

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230301-0015 EST

Just got power back on. DTE workers have been working 12 hour shifts, and running three overlapping shifts.

My problem was caused by a large tree that came down on our primary lines.

The next storm will hit us about Friday. Even though underground lines would reduce the problems we had this week, I still favor overhead lines.

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We had an ice storm a couple of years ago and power was out for everyone for at least 2 days, some longer. It was kind of fun running everything (needed) off the genny. But I only have a 7.5KW and couldn't run any heat. I did have a propane heater and a kerosene heater. The genny would run approx. 8 hours on a tank. The kind of fun part was soon gone when I realized the cost of running everything. Kerosene being the most cost.
These small gennys are fine for a short period. But if I lived in an area with frequent and on-going power loss, I would invest in a larger, whole house genny.

I see these larger gennys being installed here every day. We won't average 2 hours of power loss per year. I can't see looking at $10K sitting there doing nothing for 99.5% of the time.
 
gar said:
230228-1654 EST

steve66;

I have natural gas for heat, hot water, and cooking. If I did not have this gas supply my portable electric generation costs would be huge.

If I did not have natural gas I would have probably had a propane powered generator.

Note that when running a gasoline powered generator at less than something near full load the efficiency is going to be poorer than full load. If the generator had a lot more rotating inertia, then I could get by with a smaller unit. Still the Honda 5 kW is a good balance. In a life time one does not need the generator very often.

It is now about a week that I have been on generator power. No useful information exists as to when I will see power restored. My guess is there is a substation transformer problem.

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Makes me wonder how efficient the small kohler and gererac pad mounted natural gas generators are, and how much it would cost to run one of those. Or how much it would cost to run one of those.

Most people probably don't think about the operating costs when getting a generator.
 
Little Bill said:
These small gennys are fine for a short period. But if I lived in an area with frequent and on-going power loss, I would invest in a larger, whole house genny.

I see these larger gennys being installed here every day. We won't average 2 hours of power loss per year. I can't see looking at $10K sitting there doing nothing for 99.5% of the time.
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If I had the money to throw at a whole house generator and ATS I would.
Only because we have a high water table and when it rains for a day or more my sump pump runs a lot. And if I'm not here to hook up my portable genset I'm in trouble. It would be nice to not have to worry about the weather when gone on a trip.
 
The installation manual has fuel requirements IIRC. Shouldn't be too tough to figure out how much they will cost you.

Several years ago after weeks of downed power lines, I had several farmers in the area say they were never going to bitch about POCO charges again. Many had tractor driven units capable of running everything but a tad overkill for those nighttime demands.
 
steve66 said:
Most people probably don't think about the operating costs when getting a generator.
Click to expand...
We care about heat, water and refrigeration!

This is also why I got propane backup on the heat pump, so I could get lots of heat from a smaller generator than needed for a heat pump.

Last year power was off for two days. then for 6 to 24 hours maybe 4 more times during the year. Generator gets used. A whole house with ATS is on my wish list.
 
retirede said:
Small gasoline generators are horribly inefficient. A 5KW unit will burn about 3 quarts per hour. That comes out to roughly 20% efficient.
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I'm a little surprised their efficiency is that high. Even the most-efficient heat engines -- coal-fired steam powerplants -- achieve only ~35%, while automobile engines average about 8%.

Metallurgy, the Carnot cycle, and the ambient temperature put some severe clamps on the efficiency attainable from a heat engine.
 
macmikeman said:
Run some extension cords across the Ambasador Bridge to Windsor and hook em up to you cousin Larry's house.
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I put in a 60 kw at the boss’s best friends house, way overkill, in fact I had to double the size of the service I needed because of it. Any how, his brother in law lived in the subdivision behind him, and said he was going to run an extension cord through the sd to his house if he lost power! LOL!
 
Little Bill said:
We had an ice storm a couple of years ago and power was out for everyone for at least 2 days, some longer. It was kind of fun running everything (needed) off the genny. But I only have a 7.5KW and couldn't run any heat. I did have a propane heater and a kerosene heater. The genny would run approx. 8 hours on a tank. The kind of fun part was soon gone when I realized the cost of running everything. Kerosene being the most cost.
These small gennys are fine for a short period. But if I lived in an area with frequent and on-going power loss, I would invest in a larger, whole house genny.

I see these larger gennys being installed here every day. We won't average 2 hours of power loss per year. I can't see looking at $10K sitting there doing nothing for 99.5% of the time.
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Latest subdivision here about 750 newish homes, all UG lines. 75%of the folks have generators. Think it's more a status symbol.
 
drcampbell said:
I'm a little surprised their efficiency is that high. Even the most-efficient heat engines -- coal-fired steam powerplants -- achieve only ~35%, while automobile engines average about 8%.

Metallurgy, the Carnot cycle, and the ambient temperature put some severe clamps on the efficiency attainable from a heat engine.
Click to expand...

Cars are terrible because of the widely variable operating conditions. A fully-loaded generator benefits from constantly running in its most efficient state.

I arrived at 20% as follows: Typical 5KW generators claim a loaded consumption of .75 gallons per hour. That’s roughly 25 kWh input (33.7 kWh/Gal x .75). 5KW / 25 KW x 100 = 20%.

Perhaps the .75 Gal per hour is marketing BS?
 
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