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I believe the breaker that's desirable is one that if basically a magnetic type, by also has a fluid damped mechanism. At slight overloads, it acts like a slo-blow fuse, allowing the overload to go on for quite a while before the damper lets it trip. With more severe overloads, it trips...

10 hp is going to be somewhere around 8 or 9 kW when running. It's hard to imagine a generator rated at 5 kW handling that load, say nothing of starting it.

That sounds correct according to the manual. Then if you have a typical real-world load of 10,000 VAR, PF=0.8, the meter will read 100%. No, the oddity is just in how the manual says to calibrate the meter so it reflects the capability of the generator with real-world loads. 12,500 watts...

The catch is that the generator is rated at 52 amps at 0.8 power factor. The manual states that if it's running a resistive load, full power is achieved when the meter reads 80% rated current. Running the generator with a purely resistive load of 52 amps at 240 volts is overloading it...

I bet you'll be OK when you replace the bad capacitor. My 003A starts my industrial 5hp 2-stage compressor OK. It has a 1725 RPM Baldor motor, I assume something like what you have.

You may have read it already, but back on the 2nd page, Speddmon posted a PDF file from the manufacturer of the breaker, that tells how it works. Large overloads will trip it immediately. It doesn't sound like 39 amps would fall into the "large" category, but there has been some mention of...

As I understand the breaker, it is a complicated one with a fluid damped delay mechanism and a magnetic trip mechanism. Even though it's never been used, if fluid leaked out over the years, is could lose its time-delay ability. Tripping with a steady 25 amp load is a different story, though...

The way I understand the original breaker, if the fluid were to leak out, it would trip very quickly, without the time delay feature. I'm betting that the ones that won't start big motors have something like that wrong with them. My 003A starts an industrial 5hp air compressor easily, while...

I exercised my MEP-003A today. While it was powering my house's normal loads, I let enough air out of the tank to make my 5hp compressor start. It's an industrial compressor with a real 240V 5hp 1725 rpm motor that is rated at 24 Amps at full load. It started and ran OK, although you could...

After reading that document, I understand that it's the controlled flow of silicone oil in the solenoid that controls the trip delay. This means that barring a severe overload that causes enough flux to pull the armature in before the iron core moves, the breaker should allow substantial brief...

By the way, sewerzuk, your YouTube videos about various MEPs provided a good part of the information that got me to buy the MEP-003A, and so far, I couldn't be happier with it. This forum helped me decide that the 003A version was the right size for my needs. Thanks to you and the others on...

That's encouraging. Your shop compressor sounds similar to mine, and the 23 amps sounds like it's a single phase motor too. It will be good to find out if I can run it from the generator, but in reality, if I'm powering the house during an outage, with lots of other loads, I would probably be...

I should have mentioned that I was talking about starting 3-phase motors. As far as your air compressor, you never know until you try it. Even a quick ramp-up reduces the inertia load of the motor and equipment, and it might be enough to let it start from the MEP-003a. I have an industrial...

I would expect larger motors running on generator power could be started without tripping the breaker by using a variable frequency drive (VFD) to ramp up the speed. In many applications, a simpler soft-starter could be used. It wouldn't take a very long ramp-up to significantly reduce the...