3000W Chinese Gensets Info.

Old & Slow wrote:
Well s*** happens. I have not the slighest idea about what is inside the AVR. I had one go out on an OEM Onan with less than three hundred hours. There have been numerous AVR failures on the 3500w Chinese gensets reported.

Floyd

Floyd,

There have been "a few" AVR failures reported. Considering the number of units we are encountering from folks on this thread my take is it is no more per 1,000 units than any other electronically controlled appliance - such as a TV or DVD.

I will go on to say that it looks like the majority of AVR failures can be attributed to:

1. Excess heat
2. Not shedding a load before shut-down
3. Starting the genny under load

I have experienced two AVR failures. One was due to my initial ignorance of proper care and feeding of a new generator and the other was intentionally pushing it to excessive temperature limits to discover what an AVR could withstand. John was conducting a similar test when his auxiliary cooling fans shut down on an enclosure he has built.

The AVR's in Chinese generators contain an array of diodes and transistors, not to mention the expected resistors and capacitors. The most susceptible component appears to be an IRF830 PowerMESH MOSFET. A photo of an AVR I un-potted is shown below. As you can see, it contains a lot of "stuff".

The so called problem is not unique to any particular brand of Chinese generator. They all use similar AVR's.

I would just hate for anyone to get the idea that these things were dropping like flies. While failures do occur, they are NOT numerous.

Unfortunately, when a failure does occur the voltage spikes to 180+ and anything connected usually gets fried. This is why CPE now has OVP as a standard component in their newer generators and owners with older or different models may want to consider an axillary plug-in OVP device as added insurance.