RE: Failover generators

["Phil Harris" <phil@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> > 1) A "big car alternator" is perhaps 80A - that's only
1kW or so of
> > power which isn't really a lot and it's at 12v so you are
> looking at
> > pretty hefty cabling unless you get it to 240v AC pretty quickly.
>
> It's not too hard to find 120A+ alternators, especially if
> you look at large vans and suchlike.  And there's the
> car-modders, who need lots of power for their "music"
> systems.  Who'd have thought there'd be a benefit to
> chavved-up motahs?

See my previous reply... ;-)

(And my "motah" was *NEVER* chavved-up...)

> > 2) Although a Micra might sound nice and quiet at tickover,
> you just
> > stand beside one at 5,000rpm with the engine under load - you
would
> > *NOT* want that outside your house for long.
>
> Definitely not the way to do it :)  OTOH, driving the
> alternator from a slow-speed, high-torque engine isn't
> completely infeasible.

Thing is, car alternators need pretty high rotational speeds and even a
12v/200amp unit will only give you 2.4kw at 240v (assuming no conversion
losses) which isn't very much...

Phil