Will Any Generator Do?
I have a Generac Wheelhouse 5500 generator I bought back in 2005 because of an ice storm that knocked power out to my mothers house. She used it for a week until the electric company restored power. I...
Forum Discussion
smkettner wrote:FWIW:
Generators produce a natural sine wave but at this power level the wave can easily be distorted. Fortunately most items are not very sensitive.
No internal combustion engine driven rotary generator can produce a pure sine wave. The 180 degree combustion stroke will push it above 3600 (or 1800) RPM and then the remainder 540 degrees will coast below RPM. This causes a non pure sine wave. The 60Hz and 120VAC is an average of the complete cycle.
The heavier the load the faster it will slow down and then the faster it has to speed back up during the combustion stroke, causing more distortion as you mentioned above.
If it is brush commutated, which most are, there is crossover noise as well. A permanent magnet type head will not produce crossover.
Regardless, as you said, most items are not very sensitive to this and could care less. They just want average power to operate and most any generator can provide this.
