Diesel generators

[MrMike]

I baught a 7.5 kilo used gasoline generator today for RD$45000. It's a coleman with a briggs and stratton engine. I bought it from a company called Danilo-something-or-other C x A on the road to Navarette from Santiago, just before the Pisano free zone on the right hand side of the road.

He's a friend of my father in law and seems like an honest business man so far.

They also quoted me a 20 kilo Diesel for around 200k (new chinese) which I may end up buying eventually. The gas generator I will use primarily to charge bateries and possibly eventually use it as a mobile unit to test inverter installations when there are no lights.

 

[Hillbilly]

I came late to this thread

but we are also looking at diesel generators. I have a 5.5 KVA generator that has been here for ages.

A word to AdrianB: For God's sake! Use only the best gasoline! You will end up with maintenence problems in two months with thecrummy stuff. MY experience. Only the best gas and I haven't changed a spark plug in 5 years!

There are 6 KW Kubota diesel generators.

We are looking at a 20 KW unit. Has to run some heavy A/C units..and fridges...

HB

 

[Jon S.]

One of my friends had a 37 Kw diesel generator, a Detroit Diesel. I can't remember how much it costs but it sure as hell was good. It was noisy but when the generator is inside a caseta the noise is blocked out. Even with him living next to Colegio Arroyo Hondo, it didn't bother anyone. I think that for a big house with lots of appliances, 20-25 kw diesel generators are the way to go. You can always do what CC did by buying a generator and a inverter, it's very useful. When Hurricane Georges messed everything up for us down there, our neighbor, who was a electro-mechanical engineer for General Electric, brought a diesel generator to our building. It was noisy as all hell, but no one seemed to mind since we all got to juice up our inverter batteries with it. Those diesels are so efficient, that we poured some gas into it in the morning and at 5 PM it was still full of fuel...............we had a Trace 3.6 too, CC. Has never had any problems, only need to change all 8 batteries every three or four years and check the electrolyte level very week, brush off the build-up on the cables, and you're good to go. Lasts about a week when fully charged if appliances are used sparingly. I'm gonna look into buying some gel-cell batteries for it. They're deep-cycle, not that starter cell crap, last about 6 years, but I don't know who sells them in Santo Domingo. The best thing is no maintenance, but they're expensive. Kubota generators are dependable in my opinion but I'd like to hear other people's opinions on it.

 

[pasha]

Kubota....

excellent, based on experience with them. HB commented that whoever uses gasoline should make sure it's good stuff....the same goes DOUBLE for diesel, which is almost inherently dirty fuel.
I think the best generator by far is the old Lister [UK?] 2-cyl....don't know if Lister even exists anymore, but if you can find one it's indestructable.

By the way, what the hell are you folks running down there that you would ever need such massive power supply for? From what I'm reading many are going beyond normal emergency needs. Wrong?

Best, P

 

[MrMike]

I guess it depends on your definition of an emergency. We want to live "normal" lives regardless of whether the government finds it in it's heart to pay it's power bills.

For some this means we need to run various refrigerators and air conditioners, yes these suck a lot of juice.

 

[wtf2001]

7600 vs 3200

Adrian, in your example of RD$7600 +/- for generator power/month vs. $3200 for grid power scenario, how much time during that month was grid power unavailable? Just curious.

At the current exchange rate, you are saying grid power, with it's flaws still costs around $100US / Month?

Without taking into account fuel transport cost, maintainance cost, capital expense of the generator cost, etc., etc., off-grid costs roughly double?

I have seen threads on other power sources and the expense related to go solar, or wind etc. Still cost prohibative to do much more than have an inverter and then just be frustrated in the dark I guess.

 

[XanaduRanch]

RD$3200 is a steal.

But again, that's for actual electricity only about 1/2 the time. So double it for 24/7 electricity. We don't have much more equipment here, I detailed it in another thread. But, since here they charge a higher rate for using more KWh, the way my meter spins it'd be closer to RD$10,000 to RD$12,000 per month. And that's with normally electricity from the grid and through the meter only about 66% of the time. This week we're down to only 25% on the grid 75% home grown.

So, figure our bill at between RD$15,000 and RD$18,000 per month and a generator, even solar, becomes very attractive price wise compared to EdeNorte and the hodgepodge of systems we need to maintain to fill in the gaps when they aren't generating.

Tom (aka XR)

 

[wtf2001]

Xanadu =?

15-18KRD$ Average grid bill per month for Xanadu? Xanadu is one home? Many? Geez.

 

[gringo in dr]

The electric bills are 2 - 4 times what they were just a couple of months ago.

You are lucky if you get 10 - 12 hours of power per day.

I just installed a Trace 3.8 kilo invertor. Now I can sleep with out drowning in sweat again. It powers everything except the water heater and A/C. Fans are fine for 99% of the time.

Between the invertor and my 500 gallon tinaco, life is back to normal.

 

[XanaduRanch]

Unlike CC I provide Plug-In Recharchargeable Black & Decker Vibrators to all the Pool Girls. Those batteries, multiplied by the number of Pool Girls, suck up a lot of juice. So-to-speak. Ahem.

We have five computers, swimming pool pump, water pump, two refirgerators, two TV's, microwave. Not that many lights. No A/C, some fans and cieling fans.

We've been paying a contract service of 800 pesos per month. But they installed a meter around March 1. Just checked. Since then it's spun around to the tune of 13,424KWh. That's 7-1/2 months of service, probably running things 65% of the time. I do not know what the current cost per KWh is. Last time I looked a few months ago we were in the 4.5Peso/KWh range for our usage. Supposedly EdeNorte has a formula to compensate for usage at lower rates previously. But ignoring that and figuring it all at $RD4.50, that's a cost of RD$60,408, or RD$8,054/month.

To compare that figure to running a generator 24-hours per day I'd have to increase the cost of grid power by 35% to RD$10,873/month. So, a generator for me is probably equal or less in cost. Certainly it's less hassle and more stable. And getting something a little bigger allows me to cut the cost and expense by 1/2 or 1/3 by sharing with the neighbors.

At RD$11K/month a full 10KW-15KW solar system looks reasonable as well. Even if my dream system cost RD$700,000, at that rate the whole system would be paid off in 60 months! After that, no diesel, no fuel, no moving parts. Just the panels, the inverter, and the batteries, and the electricity is free. That's the way I'd really like to go.

But US$15K-US$20K is a rather large chunk of change for me right now, what with the current vibrator replacement rate at Xanadu. Maybe I could just buy CCccc some extra Viagra, invite him to visit once-in-a-while and do away with the Vibrators?

Tom (aka XR)

 

[Chris]

Re: Kubota....

By the way, what the hell are you folks running down there that you would ever need such massive power supply for? From what I'm reading many are going beyond normal emergency needs. Wrong?

Best, P

The 'emergency' is not for a few hours or of short duration. We need to be able to generate our own power for long long periods at a time. At our place, we've had electricity for about 3 hours a day (mostly in the middle of the night) for about seven days now.

This is not enough to feed an invertor and is also not enough to run a washing machine or fridges or our technical office. We have two businesses - computers, satellite dishes, telephones, printers, scanners, fans etc etc. The house needs refrigeration, its nice to shower in hot water and now and again the pool pumps need to be run. Without electricity, our waterpump does not function, so, we need some juice for the simple basic of having water...

Not emergency needs, but long term survival and quality of life needs.

Edited to add - besides all that, I think we're all just kinda sick of the quality and ineffectivity and unreliability of power here. So, most of us are getting off the grid totally. Read some of the threads of trying to simply pay your power bill. It is a lifetime pursuit, simply to pay....

 

[Adrian Bye]

To follow up with some comments in this thread:

- My electric bill is high compared to the average dominican. What I pay in eletricity is what they pay in rent. Actually, what I pay in electricity is almost what I pay in rent. ;-)

- The numbers Tom is quoting for electricity sound extremely high, given what he is running. In my experience, Edenorte will charge higher amounts for a short time to cover incorrect readings in the past. This has happened to me before.

- Edenorte is difficult to pay! I haven't received a bill from them for 2 months, I used to get them via email and mail - but they've stopped. Now I just have my assistant call and pay each month, whatever the amount is. This month was RD $3,600.

- My consumption is computers, stereo + 12000BTU AC running 24/7 for US $100/month.

- I have heard that the electric company charges for the time they are not providing electricity - this is how they make up the debts. The total amount due is averaged out, between service being provided and service not provided.

- Before this current round of blackouts started, my electricity service has been excellent (for the DR!). We had probably 1 afternoon/week outages, apart from that we had power 24/7.

- From my calculations earlier, it looks like running off the generator is twice as expensive as using the electric company. The generator also gives me lower quality of service given that
- I have to refill it
- I have to change the oil
- It smells
- It makes noise
- I can't run A/C 24 hours from it (otherwise the cost for gas would triple)
Given these factors, I can't see how it makes sense to run permanently off diesel either. I don't know how it will work for Tom, but I'm very happy to be an interested bystander!

I don't think it makes sense to give up on the electric company. Things are extreme right now, and this won't last, we'll go back to the usual unstable service.

However I *do* think it makes sense to have everything in place so you can run whatever you consider to be essential when they're not around. You should be able to consider the electric company as a "nice to have", not a "must have".

 

[XanaduRanch]

Oh Oh!

The numbers Tom is quoting for electricity sound extremely high, given what he is running.

You mean Adrian that I have one of those new fangled EdeNorte Gringo Meters?

"Honey-Pie! Fetch 'ol big mouth! We gonna shoot us a ee-lec-tree-cal meetur and watch the fireworks! YeeeeeeeeHaaaaaa!"

Tom (aka XR)
With apologies to HillBilly who even after forty plus years here could have done that Yee-Ha thing much better than an Iowa boy.

 

[mondongo]

- From my calculations earlier, it looks like running off the generator is twice as expensive as using the electric company.

Adrian, if your numbers are based on that Honda generator, then note that a high efficiency diesel generator (> 30% efficiency) will will use less than half the gas as the Honda.....for the same output power.

 

[sable227]

Take a picture when you shoot the damn thing.

 

[XanaduRanch]

Here's an article I ran across Adrian that has a few interesting things to say about small gasoline powered generators ...

http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles/thomsen28.html

 

[Adrian Bye]

Interesting article, thanks for posting.

Incidentally, I'm extremely happy with my generator. It is just right for what I need - I can run my office perfectly, charge up my inverter, and then when I don't want the noise, shut it down and run off the inverter.

Diesel would be nice, but right now what I have is working great. And we are still running on extremely limited power in Santiago.

 

[kriscane]

Does anyone know about small diesel generators? Do they exist, or do they only start at 20kW?

My ideal generator would be

- diesel
- quiet
- can run continously for more than 12 hours
- 4-5 kW

I have no idea if something like this exists. Any thoughts?

Yeah, I have come across a lot of these generators over here in Abuja, Nigeria. I have seen products like Yamaha, Mitsubishi and Honda.

 

[kriscane]

generators

Does anyone know about small diesel generators? Do they exist, or do they only start at 20kW?

My ideal generator would be

- diesel
- quiet
- can run continously for more than 12 hours
- 4-5 kW

I have no idea if something like this exists. Any thoughts?

Yeah, I have come across a lot of these generators over here in Abuja, Nigeria. I have seen products like Yamaha, Mitsubishi and Honda.

 

[Hillbilly]

Honda and Yanmar and Kubota have small gensets!!

They are available in most of the larger cities.

HB