Santa Rosa Fire Storm- Motivated Generator and switch gear Project

Linghunt

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Anyhow, I'm ok and all of that, just in middle of a War Zone, This was and still is an interesting experence to have to deal with.

Lost my Power around 5 AM Monday Morning and got It back Yesterday evening.

Long time to be without nothing but an AM radio, camp stove, candles and flashlights. Cell phones with charges off truck.

But I kept my house, so I was really lucky but a generator and select systems powered would have been really nice. It was tough even to follow the news well.

I'm going to do a base line design plan and the thought process as it comes together, and then on to design, economics, plan.
 
Once you figure out your critical loads, you may be surprised how small a generator you can get away with. For the longest time, I used a 7KW gas generator to back feed a welding receptacle. I had to manually cycle loads here and there, but it kept all our comms and reefers online, and the fuel endurance was reasonable. Eventually, we got a whole house diesel. Let us know what you work out and good luck.
 
Just make sure you turn off the main breaker before you feed the generator power into your wiring. People working on the power outage will be thankful and might live longer, and it is impossible to feed the entire grid with a small generator. I know it sounds like a natural thing to do, but people often forget this important safety rule...
 
Bob, Yep, contactors and feedback, etc. Size the load, and optimize for cost .

I'm going to treat it like a small engineering job. I figured the project planning of job, then track of project would help others.

I've done so many project over the years, figured this would be a good idea for others to see at least how I do jobs.

2,900 firefighters on the fire now, Just heard on KSRO 1350 AM.
 
Yep, Lots of complete packaged systems on the market. Spendy thou. My plan is for a guideline for DIY type on budget.

One can change the load numbers and specifics to breaker feeds and customize it, but have general plan of attack.

I got almost 30 years of experience designing industrial controls and automation systems. Large budgets and the such. This one will be low budget and not too fancy for automation. ( e.g. Not going to next level where you get feedback to your network, but I'll add the hooks in the design so you can go there if you want. )

I'l post as I go, so you can see the steps I take doing planning, good planning makes the rest really easy, typically this is done fast and makes the rest go slower and more costly. Initial ground work planning not fun, and boring, and skipped. Low quality at the end.
 
Bob, Yep, contactors and feedback, etc. Size the load, and optimize for cost .

I'm going to treat it like a small engineering job. I figured the project planning of job, then track of project would help others.

I've done so many project over the years, figured this would be a good idea for others to see at least how I do jobs.

2,900 firefighters on the fire now, Just heard on KSRO 1350 AM.
I guess we will have a look at some of the devastation tomorrow. We have a little machinist group in the Sacramento (and much further afield) area that gets together officially about once a month, and also individually, to help each other out on projects, lend or borrow or give a tool, tell lies, etc. Almost all are H-M members as well. One of our group had a large fire near his place this week, less than a mile away. Anyway, tomorrow a group of about nine of us will be going to Sturgeon's Mill, in the Sebastapol area, for their last open house/demonstration day of this year. At least one H-M member volunteers at the mill. Historic steam powered saw mill...
 
I guess we will have a look at some of the devastation tomorrow. We have a little machinist group in the Sacramento (and much further afield) area that gets together officially about once a month, and also individually, to help each other out on projects, lend or borrow or give a tool, tell lies, etc. Almost all are H-M members as well. One of our group had a large fire near his place this week, less than a mile away. Anyway, tomorrow a group of about nine of us will be going to Sturgeon's Mill, in the Sebastapol area, for their last open house/demonstration day of this year. At least one H-M member volunteers at the mill. Historic steam powered saw mill...

Been out there to the Mill, you will love it. Expect to spend a few hours there to look at everything. There is a similar deal in Penngrove that is open once a year or something like that, Steam engines and the such. It's a good one too.

http://penngrovepower.org/

I have lots of web pics of the fire, I will try a gallery or something to put them together. I got a 44 minute drone video from news group that really covers damage north-east of me. I find link later.

Got Gas now, so Hot shower soon.
 
Hey Linghut, I'm down in Rohnert Park, all is well with the family & grown kids so far (1 in RP, 1 in SR by 12 & Farmers - that's still a ?)
We have too many friends / acquaintances that have lost everything - - so very sad.

Wife and I were talking about this just last night - very timely - will be watching your thread for sure!
 
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