Aldi have suitcase generator €350

Betsy Og

https://www.aldi.ie/en/specialbuys/sun-3-july/products-detail-page/ps/p/2000w-inverter-generator/?pk_campaign=ie_product_newsletter&pk_kwd=2016-07-01_15-00

Looked at these products before (not Aldi), cant really justify for the amount I'd use it but the feedback on forums at the time was pretty much to go for Honda or nothing.

There was a Chinese one (Nicoh or something like that), but I think the control panel is encased in resin or something like that, making them impossible to fix.

So hard to know if worth the gamble (I guess you can take it the Aldi one is not top end). Not knocking their stuff but most of it is "what you see is what you get" and cheap as chips so no qualm or questions, this would be a bit of a leap in the dark.

rustynutz

Betsy Og wrote: »

https://www.aldi.ie/en/specialbuys/sun-3-july/products-detail-page/ps/p/2000w-inverter-generator/?pk_campaign=ie_product_newsletter&pk_kwd=2016-07-01_15-00

Looked at these products before (not Aldi), cant really justify for the amount I'd use it but the feedback on forums at the time was pretty much to go for Honda or nothing.

There was a Chinese one (Nicoh or something like that), but I think the control panel is encased in resin or something like that, making them impossible to fix.

So hard to know if worth the gamble (I guess you can take it the Aldi one is not top end). Not knocking their stuff but most of it is "what you see is what you get" and cheap as chips so no qualm or questions, this would be a bit of a leap in the dark.

Looks good to me, especially combined with the standard 3 year aldi warranty

crabbypaddy

rustynutz wrote: »

Looks good to me, especially combined with the standard 3 year aldi warranty

Picture says 5 year warranty which is unprecedented for a gennie this size

Hondas are reliable, so are Listers who had the good foresight to make 14.5V gensets back in 1946.

It's the automatic voltage regulator that's filled with poxy resin and they're often more expensive to replace than the entire genset because it's proprietary.

Probably the predictable reply; I think solar PV can outpace it. €3.80 per 3.2 hour tank on top of the initial investment and 69dB from 7 meters...

Say it runs 6 hours a day for 10 days a year that's €75 on expensive, smelly, noisy, lecky that drinks smelly contaminant fuel.
Whereas €425 can buy 300W of solar and a good controller giving you 1kWh on most days for 25 years far more reliably with no moving parts.

Cheap petrol gensets tend to have poor regulation and voltage fluctuations with varying loads. I wouldn't use one without a meter on it..but then I meter all my electrons so I can single out the misbehavers.

Nekarsulm

I bought a generator last year for €350, but it's no suitcase model!
Also, you would need to be in a five acre field on your own, quiet it's not

Sir Liamalot, would it be safe to use an inverter welder on one of these 2.2 kva gennies, or do i risk frying it,

Xaracatz

Saw this thread and thought "It generates suitcases? Some sort of 3D printer thing?".

I'm learnding. :pac:

gctest50

Nekarsulm wrote: »

I bought a generator last year for €350, but it's no suitcase model!
Also, you would need to be in a five acre field on your own, quiet it's not

Sir Liamalot, would it be safe to use an inverter welder on one of these 2.2 kva gennies, or do i risk frying it,

Some inverters are "generator friendly" and don't care ( ie they actually built them of half-decent parts and put a bit of effort into design)

Ran a little Fronius off a long line, it was happy out

kadman

Sir Liamalot wrote: »

Hondas are reliable, so are Listers who had the good foresight to make 14.5V gensets back in 1946.

It's the automatic voltage regulator that's filled with poxy resin and they're often more expensive to replace than the entire genset because it's proprietary.

Probably the predictable reply; I think solar PV can outpace it. €3.80 per 3.2 hour tank on top of the initial investment and 69dB from 7 meters...

Say it runs 6 hours a day for 10 days a year that's €75 on expensive, smelly, noisy, lecky that drinks smelly contaminant fuel.
Whereas €425 can buy 300W of solar and a good controller giving you 1kWh on most days for 25 years far more reliably with no moving parts.

Cheap petrol gensets tend to have poor regulation and voltage fluctuations with varying loads. I wouldn't use one without a meter on it..but then I meter all my electrons so I can single out the misbehavers.

Can you tell me more about this please, maybe on a new thread, so as not to hijack this one.
Thanks

Nekarsulm

Nekarsulm wrote: »

Sir Liamalot, would it be safe to use an inverter welder on one of these 2.2 kva gennies, or do i risk frying it,

That sounds a little light for the welder. I have a cheapy one with a fried AVR sitting in my shed never been used since I inherited it from an owner who killed it with his welder. I'd expect an inverter welder to be better capable than say a self excited one. You can get welder generators maybe worth looking into if what you have is simialr. Tbh I have little experience with either, 60kVA would be small for me and they come with service engineers.

For camping I'd rather turning a car alternator than a mains one in the set. MHs are extra low voltage installations before mains to my mind most of the power ought to be going to the battery not the load or both in equal shares.

Xaracatz wrote: »

Saw this thread and thought "It generates suitcases?

You're not wrong, petrol generators do no generate petrol either. They are in fact petrol electric generators/petrol alternators/petrol turbines/gensets (generator set; engine with alternator).

Nekarsulm

Thanks Sir Liam, I'll probably watch out for a diesel weld/gen set on DD and sell this one. It's just about able to run a 2000 watt angle grinder. A little 180 amp air cooled i have will almost stall it.

On the Motor home front, heading for Antrim next weekend.

A 2000W appliance may be more than 2.2kVA. Power factor is often a brain melting topic.

heliguyheliguy

I bought one yesterday, I'm impressed so far easy to start and very quiet for a generator and it can charge my electric car (slowly). It will not get much use but it's nice to know it's there if the power ever goes out or I need to make a journey where power is not a sure thing.

Betsy Og

In terms of the noise, 67 DB doesnt mean much to me - so in actual use do you think it would annoy people in a camping field?

I gather its a lot quieter than the yokes used by mobile chippers for instance.

It's a bitova fudge because it's rated at 7 meters not beside it. There'd be a noticeable boka, boka, boka, 2 stroke noise in the breeze alright.

heliguyheliguy

Betsy Og wrote: »

In terms of the noise, 67 DB doesnt mean much to me - so in actual use do you think it would annoy people in a camping field?

I gather its a lot quieter than the yokes used by mobile chippers for instance.

It is a generator it is loud but not ear splitting like the standard ones, distance is your friend with these, even better if you can put something between you and it like a caravan. The noise does drop off quickly with any distance so it would depend on your caravan park, are the caravans on top of each other?

Here is a link to a youtube video that will give an idea of the difference, in reality they both sound louder in real life. Have a root around on youtube for more comparisons to get a better idea.

Again generators are by nature noisy beasts; so quiet for a generator can be shocking if your not used to how loud the old ones were.

Solar PV is a silent generator.

heliguyheliguy

Sir Liamalot wrote: »

Solar PV is a silent generator.

Very true, what sort of a setup would you get for that money
solar pv panels €?
charge controller €?
Batteries €?
Inverter €?
installation €?

This gennie can provide a constant 7amps at 230volts, is it possible to get a comparable solar powered supply for the same ballpark money or if not how much would it cost for a workable solution?

p.s. forgive me if this sounds smart assed; it is not intended to be. I am genuinely interested in knowing how much a pv setup would cost.

heliguyheliguy

heliguyheliguy wrote: »

Very true, what sort of a setup would you get for that money
solar pv panels €?
charge controller €?
Batteries €?
Inverter €?
installation €?

Here's three I drafted earlier.

6kWh day spec.
1kWh day (Spring thru Autumn) spec.
0.5kWh day spec.


I do my own electrics so I've no idea what a professional would charge. I'd hire a marine electrician if it wasn't DIYable.

Motorhomes already have batteries...and inverters if they need them.

heliguyheliguy wrote: »

This gennie can provide a constant 7amps at 230volts, is it possible to get a comparable solar powered supply for the same ballpark money or if not how much would it cost for a workable solution?

That's the inverter's job 2kVA would meet that demand, the battery to support that would depend on the overall daily power requirements.
12volt installations pair best with 12volt appliances.
Solar works consistently for 25 years with no upkeep cost.

A 150W solar panel minimum ought to give you conservatively 4.2MWh over it's lifetime.
The genset takes power from fossils and converts it to alternating current at 40% efficiency 4.2MWh taken from petrol would cost €1300 if that little genset can run for 2100 hours.

StupidLikeAFox

I may as well ask here rather than start a new thread.

We just converted a camper recently and have been on a trip to France - that was grand as we mostly stayed in site with electricity. However, we will now look to take it around ireand and do some wild camping etc. The missus is querying about the hair dryer and hair straightener - whats the best way to power these? We have a 120ah battery, and its hooked up to a panel which has a car 12v socket attached

Would I be better off:
1) Buying an invertor and using the panel
2) Buying one of these bad boys (the small generator that is)

I dont really know how to do the calculations and figure out what the better option is, or if either of them are even viable?

heliguyheliguy

StupidLikeAFox wrote: »

I may as well ask here rather than start a new thread.

We just converted a camper recently and have been on a trip to France - that was grand as we mostly stayed in site with electricity. However, we will now look to take it around ireand and do some wild camping etc. The missus is querying about the hair dryer and hair straightener - whats the best way to power these? We have a 120ah battery, and its hooked up to a panel which has a car 12v socket attached

Would I be better off:
1) Buying an invertor and using the panel
2) Buying one of these bad boys (the small generator that is)

I dont really know how to do the calculations and figure out what the better option is, or if either of them are even viable?

Since it's a camper it might be worth investing in,
a couple of solar panels €250,
more battery power €?? lead acid or lithium.
Mppt charge controller €100
an inverter 2000w €200 (converts the 12vdc to 240ac) 2000 watts should be enough to run the hairdryer and straightener, boil a kettle.

If you want to run electronics (microwave, tv, computer) then a 2000w true sine inverter is needed €400up.

If it's only for very occasional use then the generator will do all of this and might be the simpler cheaper option.

Just my opinion others will vary and at the end of the day you get to choose.

The engine running with upgraded split charge cabling will do that. So will a genset and so will a substantial inverter with a hernia inducing lead acid battery.
I don't know any successful motorhome lithium ion systems that's weren't custom built by electrical engineers. A lot of chargers that "support lithium ion charging" do not provide the means to load balance the cells, coloumb count the battery or sense individual cell temperatures ...so while they are customisable chargers, alone can be incendiary devices that insights a volatile chemistry without failsafes or accountability.

I'd just use PWM solar charge controllers with a well suited solar panel Voc; 15V, Vmp: 13V is best if you can find one. Higher voltage allows more fudge factor on the acceptable wiring losses and availability in exchange for less amps which are the more useful types.
It's better value for money (that can be spent on more solar panels) or dosh for watts than MPPT.
MPPT is an expensive, sophisticated, less reliable method of getting 10% extra energy from your panel.
At the end of the day a good PWM controller is far better at charging but sometimes less efficient than cheap MPPT and sometimes more efficient than good MPPT. If you mismatch your panel to the battery voltage because sometimes it's a bargain then you need MPPT to correct this, which may infringe on the saving or maybe not...

There's no need for a 2kVA inverter to power two resistors and a fan.

40 squid gets you a 12V hair drier and 12V hair straightener.

Choose your 12V high current outlet and install some well placed sockets in the vehicle for anything over 30 watts. You can break it down to regular cigarette lighter sockets, USB charge ports.
Fuse/protect it according to the smallest cable on the line.

For high, quality high current connections I recommend Anderson, DIN 9680, Hella - DIN, in that order. You need to replace the plugs on any heavy appliances too; hair driers, straighteners, laptop PSUs, 12V-15V tools, plug and play inverters...anything over 30W to be honest to this higher standard. Cigarette lighter plugs cannot handle a sustained 15A without melting and a fuse wont save you.

Here's one I made earlier with a DC laptop PSU on Hella DIN.

Tell the missus you saved her loadsa money and invested it back in a 150Wp solar rig.

niloc1951

12 volt hair dryer :rolleyes: about as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike. NO NOT waste your money - speaking from experience after Mrs. insisted we try one

Hair straighteners seem to require pure sine wave power to work, hers wouldn't work on our inverter even though it had plenty of spare capacity.

If you must provide hair drying and straightening facilities a 2 kw gennie is your best option OR she could visit a hair dressers which may well be the least expensive option if you have no other need for a heavy power supply.

StupidLikeAFox

Sir Liamalot wrote: »

40 squid gets you a 12V hair drier and 12V hair straightener.

This was probably the only part of your post I understood

Thanks for that though, have plenty of ammunition there to get researching!

StupidLikeAFox

StupidLikeAFox wrote: »

This was probably the only part of your post I understood

I imagine I do that quite often. You're not the first to say something along those lines.
I can roughly see electricity...not usually a tangible thing.

I have to bow to Niloc's wisdom on this. Most decent standard hair driers are 1kW, which to run equivalent power on 12volt will require cables as fat as your little finger. For some bizarre reason nobody makes them... Maybe they think we don't have sockets for them. :rolleyes:
Still though to run it from an inverter will require cables fatter than your little finger.
This is the best I can find 425W http://www.power-hunt.com/12-volt-hair-dryer.php it will only take 2 or three times as long as a conventional drier to do the job and some upgraded cable. You can buy the proprietary one or use Anderson connections instead.

CrabbyPaddy has mentioned previously in another thread that his ship runs a 12volt job. So I expect there's some sense to it.



Niloc I reckon your Mrs. has an induction hair straightener that needs a sine wave to heat a ferrous plate, like an induction hob. Ceramic resistive ones will run more efficiently from a modified square wave inverter than they would a true sine.

So perhaps Fox the simplest solution is an MSW inverter with a rating higher than the largest of your significant other's hair care appliances, if you can't find 12volt versions with a similar power rating and you'll likely have to burn some fossils while they're operating if you don't want to harm your battery.

Inverters cost you power twice; first in inefficient conversion losses second in self consumption. Hence I try to avoid them in motorhomes.
I have a 2.5kVA True Sine but that's for my gaff.