Aldi £59 petrol generator and television

Anything already on the ground was under ice, and we were in fairly heavy Alaskan forest on an Army base. Since it was survival training, you weren't worried about a couple dozen to a hundred small trees when there were 20+ 'victims' trying to not only stay alive, but get back to main base without losing body parts.

When you needed firewood you picked a pine tree 4 - 6" in diameter, turned your back to it and kicked it with the bottom of your heavy arctic boot. The pine trees grew fast, and only on one side due to the high winds. These were trees that would have been too bad for 'Charlie Brown' to take home. ;-) The tree trunk would snap off about six inches above ground. Then you would drag the entire tree to the fire and toss it in. The flames were going about 60' into the air, but you could barely feel the heat, six feet from the fire. Because of the low temperature, the fire could burn out completely in minutes to the point that you couldn't find a warm coal in the ashes. You could die in under two minutes from exposure to the cold air and 0% humidity. What was real fun was that you had to remove your arctic boots and put them in your sleeping bag when you went to bed. If you didn't take them off, you would lose the skin on your feet to blisters, and if you didn't put them in the sleeping bag with you, you could lose your feet to frostbite when you put them back on.

BTW, the remaining stump looked like it had been polished when the tree broke off.

The pine cones were all gone by the time they took us out for survival training. They had fallen months before the early December class at Ft. Greely. The trees had very few needles, due to the high winds, and animals eating any they could reach. These trees were nothing to write home about. They were mostly iced over trunks and some branches.

No, you need a bigger one to electrocute yourself, Maynard. Those small generators put out a crap waveform, and are intended for resistive loads. That Honda has a cleaner output but nothing like the AC mains used to, before SMPS became common.

Arfa Daily wrote

Yes I do.

And a SMPS won't give a damn.

Fantasy.

Leaves yours for dead.

Fantasy.

Its nothing like as common as you originally claimed.

But it doesn't just curl up and die when that happens.

Unlikely.

My 90's fridge only draws 200 watts, but 1500 watts in defrost. My little generator will run my 5k btu air conditioner, but it running the generator hard and uses a lot of gas, small tank.

Greg

Yes. Most small camper refrigerators draw about 3A max at 12V. 36VA is not going to cause much trouble for an alleged 800 watt generator.

However, there's a potential catch. Most generators will not run, much less start, with the full rated load. The operating power is usually somewhat less than the advertised output power. In addition, some generators have two phase outputs. The rated power is for the sum of the two phases power. That means each 117VAC load can only be

For how long? The data sheets I've seen on real generators (i.e. Honda) include derating specs at different loads. Typically, you can run it at half power forever.

Incidentally, for multi-fuel generators, the rated spec is usually for gasoline. However, if you're running propane or natural gas, the max output is about 80% of the gasoline rating. Caveat Emptor 2.0.

Yep. I'm also addicted. I've tried twice to spend a weekend at home without touching a computah or watching TV. Each time, I lasted about

I did that when I was a kid. I went urban camping in the back yard on the lawn. It was required for some obscure class I was taking. I didn't get any sleep from the strange noises. Sneaking inside for a bathroom visit was considered acceptable. Meals were catered by my mother. Not much of a wilderness experience, but you have to start somewhere.

Only if the cord is approved for indoor/outdoor use. Check the label.

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Maybe. A power line surge proved to be too much for the surge protector my old Toshiba CRT TV was plugged into.

Could it be a private labelling of this Einhell generator? I found a polyglot owners manual for it.

(...)

I've read a fair quantity of your messages on this topic. All of them are much like this one. It states your opinion, position, or pontification. There is no corroborating information, no examples, and no useful information. While you are certainly entitled to an opinion, I believe that you will be more effective if you kindly explain your position.

Jeff Liebermann wrote

I've read all of yours.

Yours in spades.

Everyone can see for themselves that that is a lie.

And you aren't, particularly with that absolute claim you made at the top.

I did that with the basics on whether SMPSs give a damn about the voltage within limits and the frequency in spades.

It is very common for the cheapo Chinese switchers used in items like DVD players, to fail in this way. They are extremely susceptible to secondary side filter cap failure - typically bulging and high ESR. This usually results in the rail voltage dropping. Most of these supplies take their control loop reference from just one of the output rails, and if it happens to be the one that's got the bad cap on - often the case - then the supply tries to crank it back up to the correct level, which results in all the other rails going way up. This often results in destruction of LSIs elsewhere in the item.

As a matter of interest, better quality multi-rail switchers used in some TV sets, do have a form of 'crowbar' in that all of the rails are monitored for output voltage, and if any become excessive, they trip a shutdown circuit on the main supply control IC. The Vestel 17PWxx series that were used in a number of manufacturer's TVs, are a good example of such.

Arfa

OK. You can shut up and piss off now. I've lost all interest in you and anything you have to say. Clearly, you are one of those know-it-all d******ds that pop up on usenet from time to time.

Feel free to pop back for another conversation some time, though.

After you've learnt to spell would be good ...

Arfa

Arfa Daily wrote

You have no idea that they did fail by overvoltage.

Doesn't mean that they failed by overvoltage, just bad caps.

Another sweeping statement that can't be substantiated.

Not even possible when it's the rail that powers the LSIs that has the bad cap.

That's not a crowbar. A crowbar shorts out the rail like a real crowbar would do.

But its not a crowbar.

Arfa Daily wrote

You can go and f*ck yourself.

Yeah, fools like you hate it when you nose is rubbed in your terminal stupiditys.

Yep. Too bad it was incomplete. Generators have an irritating habit of producing distorted waveforms when loaded unevenly between phases. This is fairly common with generators that have two phases, 180 degrees apart, for outputs. Load one at 400VA and look at the waveform. It's fairly ugly.

The problem is that all switching supplies that actually comply with some governments conducted radiation standard has a 50/60 Hz low pass filter on the AC input. That's great for keeping the high frequency hash from radiating out the power line, but not so great when presented with an input waveform full of harmonics. It's not too horrible, but it is a consideration. For example, if the input to the switcher were a square wave, 1/3 of the power would be in the harmonics. That power has to go somewhere. Some is reflected, but most of it is dissipated in the input filter. At 400 VA, that's about

With an unbalance load, most generators will have up to 5% of the power in harmonics. It's worse for small generators because the cores like to saturate at rated power output. At 400 VA (one phase), that's about 20 watts dissipated. Some switchers can handle it, others prefer to blow the input fuse, if there is an input fuse or breaker.

Jeff Liebermann wrote

Just like yours on how SMPSs fail was.

Irrelevant to the generator being discussed which can't do that.

But the generator being discussed doesn't.

And you don't get that with the generator being discussed.

You don't get that with the generator being discussed.

Not with the generator being discussed it isnt.

It isnt with the generator being discussed.

It isnt with the generator being discussed.

Not with the generator being discussed it doesn't.

Not with the generator being discussed it isnt.

Not with the generator being discussed it isnt.

Can't happen with the generator being discussed.

Not with the generator being discussed it doesn't.

Not with the generator being discussed it isnt.

Doesn't happen with the generator being discussed driving the TV being discussed.

Don't waste your time with this troll.

An unbalanced load isn't required, which only creates even order (asymmetric) distortion. A single phase generator will happily create odd order (symmetrical) distortion without an unbalanced generator load. For example:

Scroll down to the oscilloscope photograph. Note the noise and distortion. This is fairly typical of cheapo small geneators with mechanical regulators. I've seen worse.

Speaking of worse, not the oscilloscope photos:

It's this garbage waveform that causes switching power supplies to complain and UPS power supplies to refuse to run on generator power.

Incidentally, if you plan to look at the waveforms produced by a gasoline generator with an oscillosope, use two scope probes and differential inputs. One probe connects to each side of the power line. The two probe grounds go to the generator frame ground. The scope input selector is set to A-B. That will remove any common mode noise on the display, and provide some protection against accidentally getting the oscilloscope case at line potential.

Jeff Liebermann wrote

But you don't get anything like the amount of distortion you were going on about, so it isnt a problem with an SMPS being powered from that particular generator being discussed.

No SMPS will have a problem with that.

You don't know that the generator being discussed is anything like that.

You don't know that the generator being discussed will produce that result.

One of those wasn't even being discussed.

No news to me.

Why are your posts so content-free?

-- Tim

"That excessive bail ought not to be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted" -- Bill of Rights 1689