Generators

G

GxK

New member
Does anyone have experience, good or bad, with the ACDelco 1250W Digital Generator sold by West Marine.

As we begin our first full season on our TomCat 24, I'm looking at small generators to provide an alternate source of power on board and to enable me to charge depleted batteries when not connected to land.

I know folks here generally speak highly of Honda generators, but the ACDelco unit is a lot less expensive.

--Georgs
 
We are a big Honda generator fan. I don't know about the "Delco"--and could not find anything in the RV forum about it. This is a bit unusual, since almost any new generator is reviewed on RV net. The Kiopor and other knock offs of the Honda, do not have as good a reputation.

A 1250 watt unit would be great, since it would run most microwaves, as well as a number of small airconditioners. However, it still would not run a 1200 watt heater. (the 1250 is start up load--not constant load; the constant load is 1000 watts).

I am going to our local West Marine today, and I'll check with the manager and see what he has heard.
 
While Bob visits with the WM manager, here's the listing from West Marine:

ACDelco 1250W Digital Generator

At $599, it's only a few dollars less than a Honda 1000i bought over the internet.

The extra 250 watts would be nice, though.

May be too new a product to have been reviewed.

It's a generator/inverter combination like the Honda.

Would be nice to take it right back to WM if there were a problem with it.

Joe. :teeth :thup
 
I sure wish that I had seen that before I bought my Yamaha 1000watt generator....I agree...it would be nice...plus it would run a small heater if needed... I can run a small heater with the Yamaha unit but it is very small and I am afraid it will not be warm enough for my wife...I am like Roger....never get cold..

Joel
SEA3PO
 
How about getting a heater that's less than 1000W to use with your smaller generators? Or use a transformer to knock the voltage down and make a 1000W rated heater draw less power.

I'm not sure how much wattage you need, but I'd guess you don't need the full 1000 Watts.

If these are the resistance wire kind of radiant heaters I'm thinking of, you could probably also just wire two of them in series and the increased resistance would make them draw less current and therefore less power.

I know it might sound like two heaters would draw double the power, but that would be if you wire them in parallel, like plugging them into side by side outlets. I'm talking about hooking them in series, so the 120V would be split 60 and 60 over the two heaters. The power draw of a resistor (the heating wire) varies with the square of the voltage, so halving the voltage means 1/4 the power. You'd have two of these, so 2 times 1/4 is half the normal power.

If there are fans or other electronics in your heaters, you probably don't want to do this, because half voltage won't be right for them. I'm just talking about a hot wire radiant heater. Two of those in series should draw about half the power of one by itself. Plus you could put these two heaters in two places and get more even heating in your living space.
 
Jeff-

It's been my experience that most common small electric heaters have both a high and a low setting that both operate with the fan on. They usually draw 600-800 watts on the low setting and 1400-1600 on high, both wattages including the fan motor running. (Starting surges may be somewhat higher, of course.)

I routinely use such a fan on the low setting in my CD-22, and another on my Sea Ray 265. I rarely have need for an electric heater running on the high setting here in Redding/Shasta Lake.

Maybe we don't have to re-invent the wheel, just plug in the right heater to our 1000 watt generator.

Joe. :teeth :thup
 
Low power heater. 600 Watts. Aha, the smart approach. It's been so long since I saw one of those I forgot all about it. All I've seen lately is the parabolic dish quartz kind and they draw lots of power.

Good call, Joe.
 
We have used the 600 watt setting of several heaters running on a Honda EU 1000, but double check the heater, since some will have 1000 watts and 1500 watts. The thousand watts is too much for a Honda 1000, but might be OK for the 1200 watt unit.

I thought that if you lowered the voltage, you raised the current?--E =IR.

You can certainly use devices to limit the current flow for a resistive load, but not sure how this would affect the fan and potential overheating of these small heaters?

Is the Duropower a knock off of the Delco--or is it the same unit, rebranded? Duropower has not so good to mixed reviews on the RV forum--but it was not this perticular unit--just the brand in general.

Local West Marine Personal had never seen or heard of the generator mentioned, so it must be a new product.
 
For the price, that looks like a Chinese machine. General Motors, including AC Delco licenses their name to various enterprises. I bought some "genuine" Chevrolet parts for the truck, made in Taiwan under license. Note that the generator is drop shipped by West Marine.

Also, those small electric heaters have 2 ea. parallel heating elements, each ~750 watts. For low power you only use 1 element. Thus the effective R doubles, the voltage remains the same and current is 1/2.

Power = E*I = (I*I)*R

Boris
 
Hi Bob,

Bust out the Ham radio books again....

You had the equation right: E=I*R (volts = current times resistance, for those here who haven't worked with such things recent enough to remember)

Juggle it around to I = E / R, where you can see that if the R is constant, halving the voltage will halve the current.

Another factor to consider is that the resistance of the wire changes with temperature, so the R won't really be constant. (The resistance gets higher as it gets hotter, otherwise it would keep lowering resistance and draw more current and get hotter and that would lower the resistance and you can see where this is going. Melted wire.)

On the other hand, as Joe said a few posts back, let's not re-engineer the heating industry here. Just buy a lower wattage heater. The re-engineering direction is my fault. I'm an engineer and everything looks like an engineering problem to me.

Jeff
 
helm":1aymnczo said:
Check out wise sales http://www.wisesales.com/ , they were $865 for a Honda 2000 generator delivered last I checked and carry other brands and wattages as well. Might be better than a Chinese generator for the long run.
Eric
Click to expand...

Today, they are quoting $639 for the 1000W unit and $869 for the 2000W model.

Sounds like they have very good prices.

--Georgs
 
When I purchased my EU 1000, Wefing's matched what I found at Wise sales (I got my 2000 from Wise). Plus they got the unit to Pensacola--and saved shipping.
 
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