Emergency power generators
Hi Folks, Northern California is getting pounded hard by storms, as we do most every year, and have quite a few electric outages as a result. Of particular note however is that we have experienced a number of remote and inaccessible microwave backhaul sites where the on-site generator has failed to engage, leaving us with 9 hours of battery. Sometimes, fortunately, that's enough to carry us through. Other times, like now, it's not. I don't want to lecture the site owners about routine testing procedures and so forth, but it seems that we need to become experts on the topic and we would like to offer these site owners a solution to test and verify generator operation. Does anyone have any pointers to possible solutions or vendor white papers I could look at? We probably want to verify start, read voltage to verify output, and maybe even gauge fuel in the tanks if thats possible. No sales droids please, just helpful information based on experience at this time. Thank you.
On Thu, 21 Jan 2010, Mike wrote:
site owners a solution to test and verify generator operation. Does anyone have any pointers to possible solutions or vendor white papers I could look at? We probably want to verify start, read voltage to verify output, and maybe even gauge fuel in the tanks if thats possible.
Start with the generator owner's manual. You'd be amazed at what helpful maintenance suggestions can be found there. Sometimes they're even online... :) Antonio Querubin 808-545-5282 x3003 e-mail/xmpp: tony@lava.net
On 1/21/2010 1:04 PM, Antonio Querubin wrote:
Start with the generator owner's manual.
RTFM? I thought that kind of stuff was OT here. -- "Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have." Remember: The Ark was built by amateurs, the Titanic by professionals. Requiescas in pace o email Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Eppure si rinfresca ICBM Targeting Information: http://tinyurl.com/4sqczs http://tinyurl.com/7tp8ml
On Thu, 21 Jan 2010, Mike wrote:
site owners a solution to test and verify generator operation. Does anyone have any pointers to possible solutions or vendor white papers I could look at? We probably want to verify start, read voltage to verify output, and maybe even gauge fuel in the tanks if thats possible.
Start with the generator owner's manual. You'd be amazed at what helpful maintenance suggestions can be found there. Sometimes they're even online... :)
Seriously, "talk to your vendor." You can frequently get gear with remote reporting, some of it will do dry contact or even talk RS232. If you can not, a lot of it can be measured anyways. If your gear doesn't "support" it, talk to generator service guys who are well-thought-of in your area. I'd place good odds that they'll be happy to outfit you with a computer-readable fuel level indicator, oil pressure, remote test, etc., etc., though they may be smiling their way to the bank and thanking you for all the custom work. ... JG -- Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net "We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN) With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.
On Thu, 2010-01-21 at 13:17 -0600, Joe Greco wrote:
Seriously, "talk to your vendor." You can frequently get gear with remote reporting, some of it will do dry contact or even talk RS232. If you can not, a lot of it can be measured anyways.
If your gear doesn't "support" it, talk to generator service guys who are well-thought-of in your area. I'd place good odds that they'll be happy to outfit you with a computer-readable fuel level indicator, oil pressure, remote test, etc., etc., though they may be smiling their way to the bank and thanking you for all the custom work.
... JG
a lot of places just use a linux or BSD SFF/mini-ITX with a webcam grabbing a jpeg/png every few seconds or once a minute on a cron job, pointed at the controls/guages/meters. Just make sure the target area is well-lit so the cam can see needles/guages etc. Accessed by SSH (=scp/sftp/sshfs) and not running X or even a web/ftpserver, its pretty hard to pervert it for nefarious means. Much better than "IP webcams" which seem to be a magnet for google-hackers. It's cheap and known-tech to most of us, but may require a shiny black metal box (and a stainless bracket for the webcam) if the generator guys don't like the idea at first. Great for monitoring electrical breaker-boards, SAN hdd leds (using fast framerate grabs) or racks of switches for pretty blinking lights (or the lack of). Of course if you already have an old server box lying nearby, you're laughing. Make sure to buy a well-supported webcam for your kernel/distro to avoid madness. About 30-40$US will get a good one usually, GIYF for supported models. If you can get a RS232 fuel-gauge sender or enviro-sensors, you already have a SSH-to-RS232 gateway ;) Some SCADA gear is extremely expensive and a can of worms in its own right. Gord
On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 3:21 PM, gordon b slater <gordslater@ieee.org>wrote:
On Thu, 2010-01-21 at 13:17 -0600, Joe Greco wrote:
If your gear doesn't "support" it, talk to generator service guys who are well-thought-of in your area. I'd place good odds that they'll be happy to outfit you with a computer-readable fuel level indicator, oil pressure, remote test, etc., etc., though they may be smiling their way to the bank and thanking you for all the custom work.
... JG
a lot of places just use a linux or BSD SFF/mini-ITX with a webcam grabbing a jpeg/png every few seconds or once a minute on a cron job, pointed at the controls/guages/meters. Just make sure the target area is well-lit so the cam can see needles/guages etc.
<big snip>
I've solved this in several locations with Arduino (google is your friend) boards. They're cheap ($40-$100/pop), are easily networked, and can be used to send the required data back in a variety of formats (we have Nagios monitoring them, checking every X minutes). This, of course, is no replacement for running the genset every so often to verify it actually starts. -brandon -- Brandon Galbraith Mobile: 630.400.6992 FNAL: 630.840.2141
Joe Greco wrote:
On Thu, 21 Jan 2010, Mike wrote:
site owners a solution to test and verify generator operation. Does anyone have any pointers to possible solutions or vendor white papers I could look at? We probably want to verify start, read voltage to verify output, and maybe even gauge fuel in the tanks if thats possible. Start with the generator owner's manual. You'd be amazed at what helpful maintenance suggestions can be found there. Sometimes they're even online... :)
Seriously, "talk to your vendor." You can frequently get gear with remote reporting, some of it will do dry contact or even talk RS232. If you can not, a lot of it can be measured anyways.
If your gear doesn't "support" it, talk to generator service guys who are well-thought-of in your area. I'd place good odds that they'll be happy to outfit you with a computer-readable fuel level indicator, oil pressure, remote test, etc., etc., though they may be smiling their way to the bank and thanking you for all the custom work.
Many automatic generators have provisions for a remote annunciator which are typically just wired up as voltage out for each warning light/alarm. You could easily put a tiny relay on those and make it contact closure. It might not give you "the temp is 151" but it could give you "pre-alarm high temp" before "high temp shutdown" for cheap. ~Seth
participants (8)
-
Antonio Querubin -
Brandon Galbraith -
gordon b slater -
Joe Greco -
Larry Sheldon -
Mike -
Seth Mattinen -
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