[MRCA] Generator Set Information Requested

WA5CAB at cs.com WA5CAB at cs.com
Tue Jul 28 01:33:56 EDT 2009


Paul,

As a practical fact, unless you can come up with a PE- or PU- nomenclature 
for it, you aren't likely to come up with anything.  In the under 20 -50 KW 
range, about the only contractor that that isn't true of would be Onan.  

To answer your other question, probably the only 24 VDC it outputs would be 
for battery charging.

If you are considering it as a backup generator for your house, unless your 
house was built in the 30's or earlier and never rewired, forget it.  
Living where I do and where I used to (Louisiana), and having gone through what I 
have (several hurricanes and ice storms), I'm qualified to say that.  5KW 
at 120/240 is the absolute minimum, and will run one refrigerator, one deep 
freeze, a few lights and one large TV.  That's what got us thorugh the 
aftermath of Hurrican Rita (actually a 4400 watt Homelite).  As a practical 
matter, most houses today are wired for 120/240 and you'll have trouble running 
much of the house off of a 120 volt unit.  My opinion is that the minimum 
anyone should consider spending more than pocket change for in a backup 
generator is 15 KW.  With this and careful load management, you can run the heating 
or cooling system and enough of the rest of the house to be relatively 
confortable during an extended power outage (subject to fuel availability, of 
course).  Our current backup generator since (literally) the night before 
Hurricane Ike, is rated 45 KW.   With it we ran our house and parts of three 
neighbors houses for about a week after Ike.  The average house today needs 
about 15-20 KW with electric cool and gas heat and electric oven and cook top.  
I don't have any experience with electric heat.  After Alicia 26 years ago 
we ran pretty much everything (except we couldn't run my shop) off of a 17.5 
KW Onan diesel.  Including part of a neighbor's house.

But 5 KW at 120 VAC only will be a problem pretty much wherever you live 
today.

In a message dated 7/27/2009 10:37:52 PM Central Daylight Time, 
beckrep at citlink.net writes: 
> Folks,
> 
> A friend has located a GENERATOR SET, MODEL JHGWJ7 (?) manufactured 
> by John R. Hollingsworth in 1958.  It usesd a 24 volt battery and 
> outputs 120 v, 60 cycles with a 5KW rating.  It's Army green.   This 
> one looks like it was well taken care of, comes with a NIB 24 volt 
> battery and has logged 908 hours.  They want $500 for it.  Does it 
> put out 24 volts, as well, and if so, at what current?  I can think 
> of some good uses for it.  Any experiences or comments would be 
> sincerely appreciated.  Thanks.
> 
> 73's de Paul K2LMQ    Kingman, AZ

Robert & Susan Downs - Houston
wa5cab dot com (Web Store)
MVPA 9480


More information about the MRCA mailing list