Load testing a 500kVA generator
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- Опубликовано: 30 май 2015
- A follow-up to my August 2011 generator test video. Every six months (unless we've had a power failure in the mean time) we perform a load test of our main standby generator at the office. Rather than hiring a dummy load, we just use the electrical equipment in the office itself, which also gives us a chance to identify any "trigger-happy" breakers within the building.
We don't perform a full-load test, but a combination of all the lighting, air conditioning and the IT server room gives us around 150kW to play with; almost a 40% load.
Original video: • Testing a rather beefy... 
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That diesel seems perfectly happy with the load. Love it when those turbos spool up.
I don't know how this ended up on my recommended but I'm glad it did because this is really cool.
Nice execution of load test. 500kVA Generator looks well maintained and in excellent condition. There is plenty of spare capacity left. That generator can put out 700 Amps per phase. Great video.
RODALCO2007 Now you know where that Facebook photo came from :)
"Do not turn switch if you want to keep your job!" Love it :D
That went alot smoother than the last time I saw a generator test ...... that resulted in about 9 days of work to repair the damage LOL
+arcadeuk We've got another smaller generator across town which decided to pick a fight with the incoming mains supply a year or so ago. The changeover panel didn't fare too well.
I want to see the aftermath of that!
we had our transfer switch fail to kill the mains, we back fed the lines, lighting half the block, it did not last long. we toasted almost everything. quarter of a million later after fixing and repairing and replacing, we have a fail proof system now.
Nothing matches or gives such a comforting feeling as the sound of a purrrring generator .. and the smell of diesel exhaust in the morning .. loved every minute of this video. thnx.
Tier 2 Volvo 16L. We parallel blocks of 4 in hospitals to as an alternative to 3516 CATs. Same footprint more redundancy. At 1800 rpms they will make 750 kVA standby. The iT4's & T4F will make 781 kVA.
The most beautiful sound on the planet during an outage .. thanks for sharing this .. Cheers
Whenever we've had outages of a couple of seconds I've always listened out to hear if it was long enough to catch the generator's attention, as it's right across the road from my office :)
Brings back memories of the site i worked on, about 13 generators, several were 250KVA, one was 500KVA, and a lot of small ones.
We actually had 5x 11KV to 415v substations on our site, and i was trained to switch the 11KV as part of my job
Hello can get some information about load test ..?
@@adamAli-jl4ti What would you like to know?
@@akimbojimbo3763 commission load test how can do to power plant
please do another one of these videos again because I love these videos on generator sets with a load
Nice machinery. Thanks for showing!
Wish I had one of these in my basement. I could have helped some neighbors after a hurricane when the power was off for days! I always thought Volvo Penta were marine diesels, but as I dug a little deeper the clouds parted and I was a bit more informed.
Love the sound of the load step when the engine takes the full load. And later when it dumps the load. Next time flick the switch again during the 3 minute cool down period. ;)
You don't want to be anywhere near that switch when those contactors are switching. If they don't open properly they'll be in the middle of a fight between the generator next door and the transformer on the other side of that wall. They won't go bang, they'll go boom. That's why I flicked the switch and legged it :)
@@AintBigAintClever That's the way 👌
That startup.... beautiful
Very cool video with the infrared camera and the power meter. Would love to see you do a full load test with load banks.
Thanks so much for sharing your experience sir
One site I worked on had the ability to manually synchronize, parallel, and transfer with no glitch. I am surprised by the more modern stuff having as long of a blackout between sources as there is. New stuff is a lot slower and with a break in power. Thought they would have improved on this with automation, but sadly not. We used to parallel 3 of 4 generators to bring up the building HVAC load, and parallel with line in the shutdown. If the utility shorted during the transfer, the reverse power relay dropped the utility to meet the requirement to not backfeed the utility.
Very nice unit, controller and installation, excellent start and test, I like to do 50-60 minutes on load but that would make way to long a video for RUclipsrs, great video thanks for sharing this
That is a nice beast generator there.
Nice. Ours gets ran up every so often and it is quite smokey for the first five minutes or so. Love the smell of diesel fumes in the morning :)
I have heard about some office block that had a new genny installed and part of the commissioning process it was tested with the "dummy load" of the building. They then discovered that a couple of phases had been wired to the 240v circuits! Oppps! Quite a lot of damage IIRC!
FrontSideBus Heh. We used to do regular testing on ours, but the disruption of switch over meant that testing eventually got cancelled as it was too disruptive having to stop all work. It was fine until the generator failed to start some time later, causing total chaos until one could be brought in on a trailer. Then when mains power came back, there was an issue with the transfer switch not working right, causing the UPS to blow up.
We've had some contractors in for the last 12 months sorting out the damage. This needed a second 11 kV feed from a newly built 33 kV substation to provide grid diversity, paralleling gear on the main generator so that testing can be performed without power interruption, larger capacity dual redundant UPSs, a 2nd generator for critical circuits, rebuilding all internal switchboards and sub-panels to have dual redundant supplies.
ChumpusRex
Ouch !
That is fucking bonkers how quick, controlled and smooth!
Nice setup. It is good that you test this regularly, one place I worked at never tested theirs and when it was needed, the battery was flat!!
On the flip side, another place I worked at had three big generators that were used for testing electrical equipment regularly but could supply the whole factory (7500 man workforce) and some emergency supplies in the local area too! The engines looked like something from a cruise liner!!!
Paul Roberts Been there, done that. The generator before last was just for the server room. IT department expected Property to do it. Property expected the caretakers to do it. Caretakers expected IT to do it. As a result, nobody did it. Eventually when we had a power failure it turned out the governor had packed in, and the UPS had no intention of returning to mains power, not at 300 volts per phase. For its 40kVA replacement (now running part of a building 30 miles down the road) and this one, IT do it.
You can hear the turbocharger once the compression and exhaust pressure build up due to applying the load.
Lol I seen the 50 hz and was thinking shit that’s not good. Then I remembered UK. 🤣
Mmm, the sweet buzz of instant death.
It’s very alluring lol. I prefer our 60 cycle sound here in the US though
good job there m8
Hello, I’m trying to understand what’s going on here.. so that little key switch flips off the mains contactors... and the generator control detects loss of power, has a delay, then initializes start up. Then once it’s running it flips some contractors to connect the load to itself? Then once the mains comes back on, the generator continues handling the load for a certain delay, then flips the contactors back to mains power? Where the generator then runs at idle to let the turbos and itself cool?
i manage our powerhouse where we are, 2 x Hino J08C/stamford (UCI274H14-20) 180kw(200kva) alternator with AS440 avr's, DSE8610 load sharing controllers configured on 8 day schedule with on-demand call-up. We've increased our load on the bus by 11%, average load is about 92kw, increases to 125kw in the summer with peak load of 133kw, suffice to say that second set gets called up quite a lot when its hot out here in the desert. We've been having an issue with the first set hunting on load(bus load110kw), set 1 reaches its max threshold, controller calls up second set but because the frequency is boucing with the eng hunting, the second set can't syncronise and we get electrical trip alarm. Looking through the data from the 8610 it looks as though the controller is lagging seeing the frequency, data from the 2nd 8610 when running sets in parallel is different, and should be identical.
Thank you for sharing sir new supporters here
Ooow thats a beast :D
Well it all looks very neat and professionaly designed, cant see any of that going wrong soon.
Do you test all the computers ups at the same time?
zx8401ztv Just a check to ensure they're back on "mains" (we had a scare a while back when the UPS decided to hold onto its load for a few minutes longer than it needed to).
AintBigAintClever Ooow thats odd, they normally detect the mains is back and seamlessly switch back, lets hope it was a one off.
Mind you they make a noise while in inverter mode, beep beep lol so the mostly water filled creature sitting near it has time to close the pc down :D
HAAAAAA!!!! Peter Griffin "Temptation" warning sign.
That was previously on a distribution board in the server room. The board had an emergency stop button that we were almost certain had been deactivated, but weren't certain enough to try it out.
1:56 Peter Griffin :D Like that when people have humor :D
That was originally on the distribution board in the server room, underneath a big emergency stop button that everyone was pretty certain had been bypassed, but not certain enough to push it.
Nice system! Question, I notice after the initial start and warm-up cycle it seems the load "ramps up" from a hundred or so to 200 over a few seconds, are there banks of contactors being switched in one by one to give the genny time to "catch up" and the turbo to start making boost? Fascinating hearing that turbo spool as the load increases.
No, the whole place switches on in one go. There'll have been a lot of flourescent lighting back then and there may have been some delay with those coming back as they were all electronically controlled.
My john deere diesel generator is a bit smaller but I recognize that LCD display... Is that a Deepsea Electronics EGC ? 🙂
How to get all those kind of power equipment
Google's not letting me post this as a reply. G+ settings?
+Sas Quatch Something definitely flashed but I don't know where it came from. I noticed it at the time but my colleague didn't see it. Could even have been from the switch room next door (I always get the hell out of there when load testing).
in the event of an actual power failure, will the generator controller shed some loads like air con and prioritise things like servers? How long can it run on diesel?
+TH404 There's not much we could shed. Aircon is a no-no as the server room's constantly kicking out about 30kW of heat and there's no point running it on backup if we're going to cook it.
I believe the runtime on a full tank is 24 hours.
felicitation
Nice "Little" genset. ;) Out of interest, how many floors in the building this genset is used for, and could it supply the whole building if it needed to or just select parts of it?
VauxhallViva1975 In most cases, when generator power is required, the main switchboard will connect the gen power to services that are powered from essential services switchboards, which could be fire systems, lifts, select lighting, computer servers etc. As a rough guesstimate, I would say it should be able to provide backup power for at least a 7 or 8 storey medium sized building.
smiley235 Cool. Thanks for that info. :)
VauxhallViva1975 Whole building, plus a few outbuildings. Next up the line from the changeover panel is that big main breaker, next up from that is the 11kV transformer in the room next door.
Smart to not be in there just in case .. very smart brother if u have the option to be safe then do it hands down
We have a smaller generator (40kVA) across town which had a changeover panel failure. Generator picking a phase fight with the nearest substation transformer? The changeover panel lost and got blown off the wall. For the one in this video the transformer's behind the wall the changeover panel is on (so when I leg it outside there's a transformer to my left and a generator to my right, both just one wall away).
Volvo Penta pretending to be a Caterpillar? lol
why do you have a lower current on L2 than on L1 and L3?
Three-phase loads should balance equally across the phases, but the building contains mostly single-phase equipment such as lights and PCs, so is much harder to keep in balance, although the load would change with the PCs switched back on.
Are you from the UK. The engine really powerful and strong.
yes he is 50z here in the uk
Just curious but why do these bigger generators put out 50Hz and not 60Hz? I always thought 60Hz was the standard running frequency.
It's not to do with the size of the generator, it's to do with the electricity supply frequency in your country.
www.worldstandards.eu/electricity/plug-voltage-by-country/
Interesting. I now see it's either 50 or 60Hz depending on the country. I wonder why there are two different frequencies considering A/C current is produced the same way regardless of where you're located in the world.
More info here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_frequency
Ozzie Alarcon it only depends with the power systems of the country , some countries it's f=50Hz so all the appliances should suit up
Awsome😊
Just wondering, How does a 500kVA dummy load looks like? The biggest one i have is a 180W@12V(225Wmax) one I made with ceramic 15W resistors.
Laharl Krichevskoy They're probably going to be just a big fan heater, that's one of the easiest ways to dissipate that much power. Just imagine a whole stack of resistive elements in huge box with a big fan.
Laharl Krichevskoy They had one there before, I think it's basically a big fan-cooled resistor grid. There are resistor grids in the roof of some diesel-electric trains, so I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of them are just train grids on a fan-cooled trailer.
AintBigAintClever
mmm sounds like a hair dryer, a 500kva hair dryer
Laharl Krichevskoy One I used to work with was a bedstead, with the spring inner replaced with 1cm thick wire springs. Used to run up to red heat as a 28VDC 4kA load. Other one was a 44 gallon drum with 3 electrodes into it, filled with salt water, to test the 3 phase 115VAC alternator, that would merrily boil off the water, and every so often you would open the hose to fill it back up a little to keep the load constant.
How long do you run the generator every 6 months?
How often do you change the oil, how much o does it take and as you probably change it after very few hours. Does anybody reuse it in their car?
It's usually about 20 minutes. All servicing is carried out by an external company so no idea what happens regarding the oil (46 litres of it according to the Volvo TAD1640GE datasheet).
How many liters of diesel would a generator like that use at full load and how many average homes would it power
Depends on size of unit and overall load. I can give you, as an example, the numbers for the generator outside my office. It's a Caterpillar unit, rated for 300kW at 208V 3 phase 60Hz. At full load it is specified by the manufacturer to consume 27-30 gallons of diesel per hour (roughly 102 to 113.5 liters per hour). During the 12 hour commissioning load test, we actually consumed somewhere around 400 gallons of diesel so the spec seems low.
I did look up the specifications on the model in the video, a Broadcrown BCV506-50. Using the Volvo TAD1640GE inline 6 cylinder turbocharged diesel, fuel consumption at 100% power in standby configuration (as being used here) is listed as 104.2 liters/hour. 50% load, which is slightly higher than the OPs 40% estimate, is 51.8 liters/hour. Prime power consumption ratings are a bit lower because you have to de-rate the engine/generator max power ratings for continuous use as opposed to standby use.
What happens in situations of unstable power, will the generator kick inn in order to provide a more stable power source?
Also, couldn't someone just do the tongue test like with the 9V batteries in order to make sure that the generator is outputting electricity?
Razor2048 (tongue test lol) most of them its any single phase failure will make them kick in (but in the UK if is mains power supply fault all phases should shut off if one phase fails at the transformer end), when your running on one of these things norm the building computers (or at least the servers) will be on UPS , good thing is in the UK a backup genny only has to be half the size of a USA version (230v vs 110v)
lee x In my neck of the woods (USA) when you get to generators that power an office building (or parts of it) it is generally 480v 3 phase, not 120v. All of the lighting systems are off the higher 277 for smaller transformers and cabling.
Razor2048 If the power is off long enough to trigger failover to the generator, when it comes back it needs to stay back for five minutes (hence the return delay) before the system will switch back. We do monthly off-load tests to ensure the generator is functioning (which will indicate full voltage output but with no current), with a (supposed to be) six-monthly on-load test to give it a proper workout.
reabinc And then you get to a country with a simple system where it's either 400V 3 phase for big motors and stuff, and 230V single phase for small stuff, none of this high leg delta and multitude of silly voltages...
+Thermoelectric7 But where's the fun in that? Don't you *want* to have five different 13,800:480/277V substations in the same building, all feeding 277V lighting circuits and 480/277:208/120V mini-subs and sub-panels? :D Nah, I think you guys in the UK are just spoiled and have it easy. Where's your sense of adventure? LOL!
P.S. High-leg deltas and 12-lead motors are ENDLESS fun when it comes to the mathematical side of things. :3
(Really though, I would agree that a _few_ things over here are indeed a little dated and ready for updating. The American Wire Gauge/McM/kcMil system and motor service factors in particular are prime candidates.)
did I see arcing at around 2min 25 on what appears to be the ground plane ?
I just thought that was the lights coming back on.
@@jovetj i think it was the lights went off then back on for a split second then finally come back on
500Kva Genny says load test, load test max kva 155 some load test at that load it will be getting deisel wash and glazing the bores, you need a load bank to bring it up to the full 500Kva in steps and to hold it at 500kva for some time.
Surprised that there is no delay when you turn that key (or remote key relay) just in case the contractors blow up in your face (as it has a delay when switching back to mains power, but not when switching to generator it cuts main power immediately)
The disconnect is instant but I think the generator contactor only closes when the generator signals it's up to speed.
In this case the disconnect is contactors disconnecting from service power but it's still energized. Lots of potential for arc flash and bad shit. I agree it should be delayed
I will be a load bank technician in a few months.
who is the manufacturer of that generator?
+Annie Mooney Broadcrown
nice
can a generator run 12 or 24 hours per day 365 days per year ?
In some places the generator may well be the only power source available. www.antarctica.gov.au/living-and-working/station-life-and-activities/power-generation
Do you have any ATS cabinet.
The automatic transfer switch is shown in the video, it's the one with the keyswitch on the front.
@@AintBigAintClever Is that 2 ABB Contactor.
1286kw surge damn
That 60hz buzzing sound creeps me the fuck out
50Hz over here.
Viewer # 10. :D
Aaaah, that had some grunt. :-)
It's a shame that you couldn't 'borrow' this and try it out by putting a washing machine motor across the output...... :D
Imagine the sparks and flames. :D
Thanxx for showing,
-BoomBoxDeluxe.
_1st June 2015, 02.05_
BoomBoxDeluxe I think the supply transformer in the room next door would do a better job.
Should consider taking out that 5s start delay. Not necessary. We program those start delays to 0 or 1
We can't program it. In any case it'd make little difference for us. The devices on UPS have several minutes' runtime so saving 4 seconds is neither here nor there. Anything which didn't have UPS will have shut off anyway.
In addition we had several brief outages a few weeks back which would've unnecessarily put us on generator power had the delay been so short.
Ahhh didnt see that there was a UPS in play. Saw the lights go out and figured there was no UPS. I agree with you now, no need to start that beast during a 1-2 seconds power outage blip.
Great video, clean well maintained set up, wish more people could see this video
The server room and outlying comms cabinets are UPS fed, the rest of the building doesn't have one.
There's also a CHP unit in the main plant room kicking out 100kW when it's running, but in the event of a power failure that drops out straight away, no chance of it picking a fight with the generator :)
Typically building lights and HVAC units will not be on a UPS system when you have a Generator/UPS setup, the UPS power is reserved strictly to keep the electronics up for the time it typically takes to go from commercial power to generator first crank/up to speed/ to transfer of load to generator by the ATS. Since overall UPS capacity and run-time vary depending on the age/condition of the batteries, you want to keep the load on them to critical systems only.
Not sure what country or region you're from but I do believe that's what you typically see. It's a cheap way to cut corners and save on a bid, but the majority of customers we service would not cut corners like that. Especially on a large facility used by many people for commercial or residential purposes. Think of all the small electronics in one persons personal area that would need to be reset after a power outage, then multiply that by hundreds of people. Major productivity loss, residential wouldn't be too bad though. Nursing homes in our state are required to have full UPS systems because of the impact a full 5-10 second power loss can be to life support systems and other medical equipment. It looks like in the video he's servicing a nursing home which would further me to believe a full UPS system was in place. Every state/country/region is different though. We stick to the mantra "go big or go home" when it comes to UPS systems lololol
1:58 It's time to turn the key switch
Oh I very much like that.
Whats the UPS capacity for the servers?
Sirus We have a pair of 40kVA UPSes for the server room, either of which can supply the load on its own.
Fire department owns it
Fire department owns none of it.
What will happen to the generator if the load is very less...
We regularly test it with no load at all. It's fine.
Usually nothing but it will be less efficient , might burn more fuel than when it's operating at it's full capacity
Our sdmo has strict instructions to keep no load testing to a minimum. Eventually leads to wet stacking and oil dilution. Important to load test when possible.
So who painted a volvo cat yellow??
Might be JCB yellow, which is appropriate now JCB have gobbled up Broadcrown.
A physical switch to turn off your job, lol :)
That's a lot of watts
i did notice that flash from the switch room at 02:21
You would think that the highest load would be when the generator goes under load.
TheComputerGeek010101001 It looks like the generator electronics controls the outgoing amps. So it can maintain the 50hz properly. If you put the full load on it in once, the throttle of the engine has to respond very quickly which will cause a change in rpm's. And rpm's equal frequency on generators.
TAD1640GE.
bit smoky
I was confused as fuck when I saw it said 50hz and not 60hz
Auditing...disaster recovery and business resumption plans...the simplest reasons to fail audit...not tested...fuel tanks empty, lack of cables to transfer to back up computer, backup computer in same city and shared by others who could be similarly affected...pension in it somewhere. 😂
I have never liked the Penta engine.
Contractors for a transfer switch, not at all clever, they have no fault current ratings, no manual override, and worse still, when a coil fails you loose everything, and in that spectacularly idiotic arrangement, you can’t even safely replace the normal supply coil with the plant running off the alternator.
There is no cure for stupid.
This kind of contactor does have fault current ratings, it will handle overload 10 times the rated current and short-circuit for long enough that gG fuses or MCCBs can interrupt power. If one of the coils fail you don't loose anything since the plant will automatically run off the other power source through the second contactor.
@@mrfrenzy., nice try, but don’t go for you license just yet, the motor start rating is NOT a fault current rating, a fault is into a short, when I went to school, a motor is not a dead short, secondly, do you see any fukn fuses in that box?
The next thing you got wrong is that, the phase sensing is on the line side of the contractors, so if the normal contractor coil fails then that’s it, no power to the load since the phase failure relay still sees all three phases.
So, zero out of ten for you this time around, good luck with your plumbing career.