[OT] Generator testing

[Hewitt_Tech]

Tom Buskey wrote:
> 
> 
> On Wed, Sep 9, 2009 at 7:30 AM, Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org 
> <mailto:gaf at blu.org>> wrote:
> 
>     On 09/08/2009 10:18 PM, Ben Scott wrote:
>      >   FWIW, I find this topic fascinating, and quite possibly of interest
>      > to my professional career, so I'd like to hear the stories, too.  :)
>      >
> 
> 
> We have a lab where I am that was killing a hard drive every week.  We 
> put the systems on UPS and haven't had a failure since.
> 
> We also had problems in the DC during outages because the AC was not on 
> the generator.  After an hour w/o AC, the DC would start to overheat & 
> we had to shutdown systems anyways.
> 
> I heard a story about a generator that passed its periodic tests but 
> failed an outage because the fuel pump was not on the generator.
> 
> 
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> 
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Not quite a war story ;^). When I was in the Army Signal Core I worked 
at communications facilities that used battery strings (48V) that 
provided station power by feeding very large inverters. In the event of 
a commercial power fail one of two 30 kw diesel generators would auto 
start and provide the missing AC. The station required approximately 15 
kw to maintain operations but the batteries alone could provide at least 
24 hours of operation.

We had a second site with a similar configuration. That site had an AC 
power failure but the diesel generator didn't start correctly. At that 
point the station actually ran for almost 3 days before finally dropping 
off line. Of course at that point all hell broke loose. ;^)

-Alex