MEASURING FUEL CONSUMPTION
I ran some fuel consumption tests on the eu2000i, which I will put into a separate post. I discovered things that do and don't work along the way which I would think apply to just about any generator.
Fuel amount: I ran the tank dry, then added 8 carefully measured ounces of gas for each test run. I didn't know if this would work or not, but it has pretty good repeatability. Not lab quality of course, but "pretty good". If you drain or suck out the tank, the first run's results will be invalid.
Pitfalls of electric heaters as the load: I noticed that the power used varied with the ambient temp. In one run, I also had the heater cycling with its thermostat. I changed over to incandescent lamps for the load.
Risks of light bulbs as the load: You have to measure the load. I used two 500 watt halogens, one pulled 475 watts, the other 555 watts. I have a 40 watt and 60 watt lamp that are almost identical in power draw.
Meter accuracy: My two kill-a-watts disagreed between 1.5% and 3.0%, depending on the load. The closest kill-a-watt in turn disagreed with my trusted multimeter by 1.2% to 1.7%. I used the multimeter readings for crunching the numbers.
