3000W Chinese Gensets Info.
professor95 wrote: EDIT ADDED 45/5/2013- When this thread started in March of 2005, I never expected to see it survive this long or amass the quantity of information that has been shared here. In...
Forum Discussion
alvinc wrote:
Circuit breakers (or fuses) are used to protect the wiring from over current situations. It's not clear to me that a single winding in the generator can support 30 amps.
Willing to be wrong.....tell me why.
You are not wrong, kind of. The maximum current depends on where you plug into. If you connect to the 120V standard outlet (brown to red) then the maximum current is that supported by the brown CB since the blue CB is not in that circuit. If you connect to the brown-blue at the 30A outlet then the current is limited to whichever breaker trips first since both breakers are in series on that circuit, although, since the CB's are physically connected to each other both would trip anyway. In any case you would never pull more current than the original factory design allowed for at 120V. Agree?
Where I do agree is that if one winding opens then all the load will come from the other winding. Since the circuit is still protected as per the original factory wiring (no more current can flow through the CB's than in the original config) I would expect (hope) that a single winding would not open prior to the breaker tripping.
When I tested the Gen set originally, I purposely pulled a load to see where the breaker would trip. The breakers tripped at well above 30 amps but that was because the voltage dropped precipitously and the amperage increased very quickly. I would imagine the same thing would happen if one winding would open as in your scenario.
It would be better to protect each winding with a smaller breaker but that would no longer be a simple re-wire.
I guess that a simpler approach, and one that I am considering, would be to fuse the jumper between red and brown and the brown Gen lead prior to the post at 20 amps each. That way if one winding went open the most you could pull from the other would be 20 amps. A simple car fuse on each side would suffice.
But then I think, if one winding is gone, I really need a new Gen!
To summarize: The rewiring I drew does not ever permit a greater current flow from any one winding than the original wiring did.
IMO, I am not sure it's worth the bother.
I welcome your comments!
