3000W Chinese Gensets Info.

han wrote:
Prof95;
Hmmm... I too bought one of the chinese generators, only a Kipor 3000 watt. My justification was that I could also use it in the winter time to power the furnace in my home. Well, to make a long story short, winter came, the power went out, I got the generator and set it up on my patio and ran a long cord into my furnace closet. The generator was started, but the furnace would not run. I received a "GFI failure fault" on my furnace, even though there is no GFCI breaker on this furnace, it simply plugs into a wall outlet. The furnace will not run on this gererator, but WILL run on my Yamaha 1000 watt generator. That tells me something about these cheap generators is amiss, like poor frequency lock, or weird wave (non-sinusoidal) waveforms... Son has the 'scope, so I can't see whats what, but would be interested in finding out.
han

Well, this is my best guesstimate and it ain't the length of power cord or voltage drop. Your Kippor is an inverter genset. It uses a 3 phase high frequency alternator to power a solid state inverter which gives an output as close to a regular AC sine wave as possible.

Your furnace is not designed to operate off of a GFCI circuit, which is why your furnace is telling you there is a fault when it does not contain a GFCI (does it talk to you?). The control modlule in the furnace must be designed so that it can determine an external GFCI trip. I bet if your furnace is plugged into any GFCI protected outlet it will show the fault code.


Back to the Kippor. I do not know if the output is GFCI protected or not. But, I do know it should be. Even if it is not GFCI protected in the conventional manner, the internal 'lectronics of the inverter are designed to sense what may be a load problem and shut the unit down to protect either you or the genset from damage. That is what it sees when connected to your furnace.

Your old Yamihami is a direct drive non-inverter unit that will only blow a breaker or self destruct if the load is not compatable. Thus, it doesn't know any better when connected to your furnace and works fine.

Getting around all of this so your furnace will work with your Kippor may be a challenge. The first thing I would try is an isolation transformer between the two. But, even that might not be pratical since finding an isolation transformer operating at 7 to 10 amps might be difficult.

On second thought, I am not currently sure of a safe method to make the two work together. My brain is fried right now after classes all day and I am coming up blank. Let me think on it and perhaps I can come up with a workable solution. In the mean time, you will need to use an old fashon non-inverter, non-GFCI protected genset to power that new fangled fancy dancy furnace thingie.