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SE Michigan | Seen a few other posts on the site, but have a few questions. Thinking about running one with a CaseIH DX34 tractor (34hp) Don't need to run the entire house just the furnace blower, freezer, and a few lights and sub pump. Can you get them in the small KW's like 4-7KW? How can youtell if you are running at the right speed (Is the tach on the tractor enough to control?) Was thinking about a stand-by Natural gas unit but not in the $$$$ plan just yet
Bill |
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Argyle, MN | 25 kw one we ran had a volt meter built into it. Just rev up pto until the needle was in the green on the meter. |
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SE Michigan | Seen a few 7K units taht only require 14hp. How much fuel can I expect to use (Case IH DX34) at 50-75% generator load? (Gal/hr).
Bill |
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North West IA/western AZ | I would think you could handle 15 to 20 kw unit. They should be fairly cheap one farm sales, and they would power your whole house. |
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Eastern VA. No such thing as too many Magnums. | I have a GenPower. They are made here in Virginia. I really like the unit. I think you should be able to run at least a 12 or 15 KW. Here is a link to the company where I got mine. I don't know what prices will be, mine is 10 years old. They are simple, they have a volt meter and a hertz meter. The guy told me don't worry about the volts, just try to get the hertz to 60 while the generator is loaded.
http://www.thepowerconnectioninc.com/
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| The rule of thumb with PTO generators has always been 2 PTO HP per rated KVA of generator. You've got 34 engine hp.... so that probably kicks out somewhere around 30 PTO hp as those things don't lose a whole lot in their drivelines. So, you're basically on course to run a 15 KVA steady. You're not likely to need 15 KVA steady BUT YOU WILL NEED 15 KVA for starting some of those motors.
When you have your basic loads such as lights and whatnot running, the fridge and a few other things that you don't think of and then the blower, pump or deep freeze cuts in... well, lets just say it's too much for a 5-8000 W generator.
We've got a 5500 W for the house. That makes 20 amps. The 15 KVA will do about 65 amps. The 25 KVA we have for the farm will make 100 amps.
Starting load is what kills these things, not that you're really using all that much power most of the time.
I'd suspect that running the 15 KVA will burn 1-1.5 gph in fuel with that tractor... without actually figuering it out. It'll burn as much on that as it does on any other hard PTO work.
For frequency monitoring I just use a multimeter (Fluke) which has a frequency scale. Set the speed until it makes 60Hz and you're good to go. With our 25 KVA that happens at 125/250V... and you can also go by that pretty well if everything is working correctly and you don't want to buy a 300 dollar fluke meter.
Our 25 came with a blinking 'speed light' but I never had much faith in it as it's hard to see a lot of the time. The gen itself it a 35 year old Magnate MkII by N.J. Froment. They're still in production if you can find a local dealer... It's been a good generator for us.
Rod |
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Oakdale, Il. | I was told by a dealer of gensets, that getting the cycles set right is more important than the volts. Compressor motors, such as a refrigerator, need the proper cycles. You can do this with a meter or a electric clock. Compare a electric clock to your wrist watch and get them to match.
Doug! |
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| have you ever thought about using your pickup as a generator "i would use a diesel" and tapping into your breaker box and feeding it off your batteries? not sure if the alternator would keep up, but if it would work it would be cheap.
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wilmington ohio | good friend just bought a 20 k at an auction it has a needle type guage on it he plans on hooking it to a 4630 -1000 shaft hooked to the 540 shaft of the gen with a coupler he only has to run the 46 at a little over 1000 rpms [engine] it should run for a couple days on a tank of fuel |
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Chillicothe, Missouri | we have a 25kw, and it has three LED lights on the tractor side, that illuminate indicating how the RPM needs to be adjusted. two red w/ a center green that indicates proper RPM. |
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Southeastern Kansas | Running a 540 generator with a 1000 rpm shaft is a bit tricky if not disastorous. At that low of engine rpm the governor does not pick up fast enough to absorb the load from a motor etc kicking in on the generator side. Thus very low voltage lag until the engine picks back up. I worry about burning up electric motors from too low voltage. It also might be cheaper to run a smaller hp tractor and run to the rated rpm than run that big engine at a fast idle. I would bet fuel consumption would not vary greatly. |
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Statesville, NC | The generator will pull in direct proportion to the electrical load. About 2 hp per 1000 watts. So if your load is 4000 watts it will take 8 hp and probably use 3/4 gallon per hour. If the load is 15000 watts it would take about 30 hp and use maybe 2 gallons per hour. It really doesn't matter what size the generator is, if it's a 15kw unit pulling a 10kw load the horsepower used is the same as a 50kw unit pulling a 10kw load. |
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Milford, Illinois | I've been doing that for 10 years and now you're telling me it won't work! Guess I better get busy and change it all around. |
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Chebanse, IL..... | Marv We all learn something about our own lives on here every day. What you thought "was", isn't. You might notice some posters often emphasize the here effect. That's what it's about. Works both ways though, keep that in mind.
Edited by Ron..NE ILL..10/48 1/7/2009 19:42
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Milford, Illinois | Okay, I just tried that and my light bulbs are really dim, plus it burned up all my electric motors. Did I miss something in your post? |
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Milford, Illinois | You're right, Ron. I should have stated that it only works "here" to use a 1000 rpm pto tractor on a 540 pto generator. I think it must have something to do with the wind turbines down the road to the east. Sets up some kind of magnetic field. They also suck the wind past here something fierce now. It blows a lot harder than it used to.  |
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| Same here..Works great..Running a 60KW 540 on 1000 pto with rpm set @1160 with 150 hp tractor.. Have a digital cycle meter on the unit and don't have to reset all my electric clocks after I use it.. |
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Springfield, MN | I have a TC25D that can only use 1.1 GPH at full load. My guess you may run your tractor on maybe .6 GPH at half load. Should be a good tractor to use. I found a 25K pto generator. I figure I can only produce so much electricity and I will not be overloading the generator. |
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South central Ks. | Tried running my 25k 540 on my 1000 shaft on a jd4020, after a couple of hrs in 0 degree temps the tractor started to smoke, I don't think it was burning the fuel completely and was scared it was going to wash down the cyl walls. Switched pto back to 540 and the smoke cleared up. Never did try it again in warmer weather to see if it would do the same thing. |
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| Been running a 540 generator on 1000 pto for decades, never had a problem but then again the REC power is rarely off and it is extremely rare that its off for more than a hour. Maybe the wind turbines 40 miles east of here have a really big magnetic field  We run all sorts of 540 things on 1000 pto and never had any problem, just need to use that squishy thing between the ears.
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Tell me about PTO generators
