Especially the big ones. And I mean really big. Like a 500kw, 480V rated generator powered by a monster V12 2-stroke Detroit Diesel engine, with 4 big ass turbos, feeding 2 big ass superchargers, feeding the engine. Things fuckin scream. If youre not familiar with 2 stroke diesels, they can be scary. Sounds like a runaway diesel engine but its just how they sound. They have a terrifying amount of torque. I like to joke that these things could probably twist an F250 into a pretzel.
Or a monster 90-Liter V16 CAT diesel engine spinning a generator rated at 2,000kw 480V. Just doing an oil change on those takes forever. They can hold like 150 gallons of motor oil and have like 8 oil filters that hold a gallon of oil each and stuff. Just running the engine with no load on it, theyll drink up like 150 gallons of diesel an hour. Crazy.
Fun fact, 2 stroke diesels only have exhaust valves, and can not run without a supercharger by design.
If batteries are the heart of your system you have lots of problems anyway. Unfortunately the batteries are the most expensive, most complex, and most maintenance intensive part. Solar is a better match for charging batteries at the C/8 rate (8 hours to fill, 4 hours from half charge) which is best way for a flooded lead acid battery. A charge cycle will have the generator running for 4 hours whenever the batteries hit half-charge, and you still need inverters and all the other crap. If batteries are going to be your main power source then solar is actually a really good option, geography permitting. Having big batteries and inverters allows you to right-size the generator to some extent down towards average load, and that's good. And you'd want this anyway because you really can't repeatedly charge batteries too fast.
I used to run solar in an RV. I lived off of it. I know how to design a solar system and the first rule of that is to take what you need and then at the very least double it. A system that has panels, batteries, and a generator might actually come in the cheapest because you could actually right-size everything and run the generator very rarely and shoot for a 20 year TBO on runtime. You'd use less fuel, fewer panels, and fewer batteries, and you'd have much more redundancy. tldr; solar is good.
AustroSlavism 0 points 2.9 years ago
If batteries are the heart of your system you have lots of problems anyway. Unfortunately the batteries are the most expensive, most complex, and most maintenance intensive part. Solar is a better match for charging batteries at the C/8 rate (8 hours to fill, 4 hours from half charge) which is best way for a flooded lead acid battery. A charge cycle will have the generator running for 4 hours whenever the batteries hit half-charge, and you still need inverters and all the other crap. If batteries are going to be your main power source then solar is actually a really good option, geography permitting. Having big batteries and inverters allows you to right-size the generator to some extent down towards average load, and that's good. And you'd want this anyway because you really can't repeatedly charge batteries too fast.
I used to run solar in an RV. I lived off of it. I know how to design a solar system and the first rule of that is to take what you need and then at the very least double it. A system that has panels, batteries, and a generator might actually come in the cheapest because you could actually right-size everything and run the generator very rarely and shoot for a 20 year TBO on runtime. You'd use less fuel, fewer panels, and fewer batteries, and you'd have much more redundancy. tldr; solar is good.