Load Bank project

To aid in troubleshooting, testing and maintaining my MEP 002, I've started buying parts to build a 5 KVA load bank. Spent some time on EBAY this morning and bought a 240VAC Dryer heater tube for a maytag for $32.00, and a 6" 250 cu ft / min vent fan in a 6" tube (120 vac) for $27.00. With little bit of framing for safety and some wiring ...still need to find the overtemp snap disk to wire in cheap, and I should have a viable load bank for full load testing and adjusting the governor... will post more pics to this thread as the project completes. With switches and a second element it could be a 10 KVA full load half load bank .

Looks good, my personal favorite portable load bank for smaller generators are cheap sub $10 hair dryers, you can fit 6 or 7kw worth in a shoe box.

Ike

240 V heat strips out of air handlers work good, they come in 5, 6, 8, 10 kW.

Heres my home-made load bank. You can see the Mep003a in the top right. I had more stuff running off it at the same time thats out of the picture and even with all of it I couldnt get past 75% capacity. I think vintage electric heaters work well though.

Isaac-1 said:

Looks good, my personal favorite portable load bank for smaller generators are cheap sub $10 hair dryers, you can fit 6 or 7kw worth in a shoe box.

Ike

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Interesting... 6 $11 Walmart hair 1875 watt hair dryers = 11,250 watts, which would be great to test my 003A. It would take only three for an 002A. If I look around, I can probably find three or four old hair dryers around here.

I use 1500 watt portable heaters and inexpensive 500 watt halogen lamps. Great for winter time tests!

A friend who works HVAC saved the emergency heat strip box from a furnace replacement. It has a squirrel cage for ventilation and two 5 kw strips. Enable one for 002a and add one old 1500 watt hair drier and you have 100% or so on an 002a. (Strip plus 1500 watts, plus squirrel cage motor.)

Enable both heat strips and a couple of hair driers, and you have the 003a load. You can likely pick one up for little or nothing by talking to your HVAC sevice company. They scrap these every day.

Jerry

I Love it...My current outlet box only has two outlets per phase and wanted to make sure that I had a balanced load, hence looking for a 240 single phase load to wire in for testing, but creativeness reigns supreme. My intentions were to be able to load bank it when I did monthly test runs..Keep it from wet stacking up and ensure it was really ready for use, so I'm aiming for a solution I can wire in or have close to hand.

Suprman said:

Heres my home-made load bank. You can see the Mep003a in the top right. I had more stuff running off it at the same time thats out of the picture and even with all of it I couldnt get past 75% capacity. I think vintage electric heaters work well though.



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I did look on the bay there are 10kw electric heater elements they look like they are made for in-duct heating. They were around 50 bucks shipped. Not a bad deal if they will actually give a 10k load but they did look a little small. Manufacturers sometimes have a habit of stretching the truth some more than others.

My generator has a built in load bank.

Thursday night we ran it at 60% for 5 hours.

My generator us built into a light tower.

6 kw generator running 4 1000 watt metal halide lights.

319 said:

I use 1500 watt portable heaters and inexpensive 500 watt halogen lamps. Great for winter time tests!

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Ditto from the FL panhandle--I've been buying the "milk-house" heaters on C/L for the last year or so. Whenever I can get them for $10 I go for it. Still planning on building a "real" load bank with 240V HW elements fitted into a salvage propane tank. Have all the components needed except the tank & the time....

For now I can load up to 15KW with the heaters plugged into a total of 10 outlets connected through a panel with 10 20-amp breakers....Also connect the halogen lamps to the convenience outlet for a little extra load & lighting too...

Load...

Mostly assembled. Still awaiting an overtemp snap switch for safety, but did a first run to see it work. Two cords, one with the 120 volt fan can go to any outlet, on the genny or other, so it is always running to keep the heater element from overtemping on shutdown. Second set 240 wiring to the heater element. Need to round up my clamp meter to calibrate the load meter on the genny, but as it sits it shows about 80% load on the genny, and heats up the garage a treat as a bonus. Parts, a Maytag 5Kw dryer heater element, came in 6" duct, 125 volt Ventech 6" duct booster fan rated at 240 CFM or about twice the CFM of a dryer, a floor radiator vent.

Yep, those electric dryer elements make for a nice balanced load for sure! Fortunately, we use an electric dryer in our house so I can use it for my monthly MEP-002 exercise/load test. I make sure I have a full load of just washed clothes ready to go before the monthly genset test and set the dryer for an hour and let it run. So as a bonus to getting a load test, that 1/2 gallon of diesel consumed in the process also dries my clothes and the dryer vent recirculater also helps warm the house in the winter. Now that's a win-win-win!

My load tester:

Awesome! Ive been working really hard to reduce our house loads, so have swapped out the dryer and hob / oven for propane. Whole house background loads tends to run at the 800 to 1200 watts or so. Installed two phase whole house power monitoring to help me get there. The only real big load I have left is the Hot Tub, and its to large and unpredictable with the jets and heating elements on their own controls / timers to be of use. Not completed the wiring and panel changes to connect the house over to the unit yet, hence cobbling together something to help me with assessing the governor performance and adjustments.

dlsacco said:

...The only real big load I have left is the Hot Tub, and its to large and unpredictable with the jets and heating elements on their own controls / timers to be of use.

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Once you get your generator all dialed in you still might consider using the Hot Tub as a potential load test for your monthly test as a way to capture some of that expended energy for good use. Some hot tubs have diagnostic modes you can put them in via a series of special sequence key pad entries that force it to stay in one mode of operation for a certain period of time. You would probably need to find a maintenance manual or talk to someone who services them to find out if your model has any codes you can use.

By the way, I lived down the road from you for 15 years in Boulder until 2003. Went the back way through Golden via hi-way 93 many many times on the way up to the ski areas. Very nice area you live in. I miss it!

I,ll a look, a maint Mode would be useful, as after a power hit or change it goes through it's cycling the various pumps and blowers for a while, makes it a little unpredictable. I love the area, our main road, highway 72 was obliterated by the floods a couple of months back. We were getting out of the mountains via a dirt road out to black hawk. That was why I went and got the generator. road has just reopened which cut two hours a day off my commute time, and made us a feel a lot better about winter. We are at about 9000 ft, so winter makes the electricity dicey anyways. We use a small amount of electric for the pellet stoves for heat and something big enough to run the well pump. Stove is propane, so the MEP 002 should do it all a treat, though there is a part of me wants a 003 so I can have the hot tub bubbling and all the lights blazing when the rest of the mountain is in darkness. Well Met Chainbreaker, we only moved to this area from the UK around 06. Lived in the wilds there as well and always had a 5KW diesel fe set there as well, but looked after a 25KW Onan cummins unit at work.

Chainbreaker said:

Once you get your generator all dialed in you still might consider using the Hot Tub as a potential load test for your monthly test as a way to capture some of that expended energy for good use. Some hot tubs have diagnostic modes you can put them in via a series of special sequence key pad entries that force it to stay in one mode of operation for a certain period of time. You would probably need to find a maintenance manual or talk to someone who services them to find out if your model has any codes you can use.

By the way, I lived down the road from you for 15 years in Boulder until 2003. Went the back way through Golden via hi-way 93 many many times on the way up to the ski areas. Very nice area you live in. I miss it!

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At 9k elevation I can understand your lust for an -003. Your -002 is really huffing to produce 5 kW at that altitude. I'm at 500' elevation here so the -002 can probably push out 7 kW if needed. I initially wanted an -003 but decided fuel consumption was a big plus favoring the -002 during an extended outage. Having enough fuel is my priority now. I've now added a 36 gallon aux tank to my trailer mounted -002 along with two 20 Liter Jerry cans. With a full -002 tank that provides a total of 54 gallons on board which is approximately 100+ hours of run time at full power or even more if I don't run any luxury power loads and can run below 100%.

That flood you guys experienced was incredible. I always had heard it could flood there in the mountains and below but when you are at 5,000 + elevation it seemed hard to imagine. I always thought of low lying areas as the most flood prone areas to stay clear of. The Weather Channel was right when they ran the series "It Could Happen Tomorrow" where the greater Boulder County area was portrayed to be a major 100 year flood disaster area. I'm glad they are getting things cleaned up and the infrastructure repaired in the area. Now you just have to be prepared for the 100 yr snow storm lurking somewhere out there. Keep that MEP ready and well fueled!

Chainbreaker said:

At 9k elevation I can understand your lust for an -003. Your -002 is really huffing to produce 5 kW at that altitude. I'm at 500' elevation here so the -002 can probably push out 7 kW if needed.

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I just wanted to pop in here and point out that 5 KW at 8000' MSL elevation was the rating specification for an MEP-002A. If you're managing to get an actual 5KW out of it at 9000 ft you're doing very well and have a stout example of the beast.

And yes, while I normally try to encourage people to load-shed and use an MEP-002A unless they know they really need more than 7.5 KW instantaneous and 5KW continuous, if you actually really are above 8000', it's a great reason to buy the bigger genset instead as these have no turbo to make up the difference.

That was actually something I wanted to open a discussion over: Altitude. From the tm, the unit is rated at 5KW .8pf altitudes up to 5000 ft and temps of up to 125 F. Those things compound for worst case air density, and I would believe impact the unit both in air density for combustion and for cooling. I'm at about 8500 and given the general rule of thumb is about 3% derate per 1000 ft, and the engine being rated fully at 5000 ft / 125 F, I should see a derate of approx 10% or about 500 watts. Given that at my altitude temps are low in the summer, about 80 degrees on the worst day, and about 25F during the winter days, I don't think I'm having much problem hitting 5 KW. The exhaust is clear with no visual smoke. I probably need to find a temperature / air density chart to see if I can correct backwards to see what I regain from the colder temps. It does point towards that if the unit hits 5 Kw at 5000 ft, at sea level ignoring other factors, the engine should be able to hit +15% over that in rated HP or support about 5750 worth of electrical load. My nominal house load is only about 1200-1500 watts in the summer, and around 2500 watts in the winter months...so the REAL reason I want that bigger generator is to be able to sit in the hot tub with all the jets running when the power goes out...

steelypip said:

I just wanted to pop in here and point out that 5 KW at 8000' MSL elevation was the rating specification for an MEP-002A. If you're managing to get an actual 5KW out of it at 9000 ft you're doing very well and have a stout example of the beast.

And yes, while I normally try to encourage people to load-shed and use an MEP-002A unless they know they really need more than 7.5 KW instantaneous and 5KW continuous, if you actually really are above 8000', it's a great reason to buy the bigger genset instead as these have no turbo to make up the difference.

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Engine wise you should get even more than that out of it, since the civilian DJE (same basic engine, but 12V and no oil cooler, different, but similar style generator end) was rated a 6.0 KW in prime power contractor models, and 7KW as standby units.