Saturday, April 10, 2010

Standby electric generator pictures

Today I am sharing with you a few pictures of a standby electric generator.

Picture 1 – 1000 KVA Standby Diesel Generator



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The generator room that houses this genset was not very large. All the equipment and support services for the standby diesel genset system were nicely laid out and installed, but there was not too much spare inside the room.

That was why I could not get a good overall picture of the generator unit.

Why do we a standby electrical generator?

No building of a significant size can be safely occupied without at least a small back-up electric generator installed.

The most important reason is the protection of lives in the case of fires. I think all fire departments in the world make the standby emergency generator a mandatory requirement for buildings with areas exceeding a certain size, or if the building exceeds a certain height.

Why diesel generators?

Oil is still a principal source of energy in our world today.

Even though for the past few years world government seemed to have put much greater emphasis on other sources of energy such as the solar energy, etc, we are still very much dependent on the fossil fuels as we have been for the past 100 years or so I think.

Because of that, diesel engine driven gensets system have been used on a large scale as a back-up electrical system to the public electricity supply.

These systems usually comprise of a diesel engine coupled to an electric alternator (also called electric generator) on a single chassis or a structural frame. Switchgears and control gears for operation, protection and instrumentation are also usually incorporated into the system.

The generator is set up so it is automatically started from a 12 V or 24 V batteries when the public mains supply fails. Then it takes over the electrical loads and shut down again after the mains electricity supply returns.

Usually not all of the building’s electrical loads are backed-up by this standby supply. Only the loads that are classified as part of the building’s fire protection system, and other loads that are categorized during the design as essential loads.

Picture 2 – Part view of the genset showing the alternator



It would be better of I can show the whole genset unit in a single picture but I can’t.

Here is the back end of the generator unit (assuming we can call the front of the radiator as the front). The diesel engine is coupled to this alternator (or electric generator), the part of the system that produces the electricity.

Notice on top of the alternator there are four flexible conductor connections.

Engines are machines that vibrate a lot. Everything that is connected to the diesel engine and the alternator should have considered the vibration in their design and installation. Picture 3 below shows one of the rubber absorbers installed below the engine chassis to absorb the effects of vibration between the genset unit and the building floor.

Picture 3 – Rubber vibration absorber



Picture 4 – Engine exhaust suspension hanger



Picture 5 – Spring absorber for the engine suspension hanger



As you can see from the above pictures, a lot of cost and efforts have been spent to handle the effects from the engine and alternator vibrations.

Picture 6 – Engine exhaust and silencer



An engine powered by fossil fuels need to exhaust the waste combustion gases. The picture above shows the exhaust gas pipe penetrating the generator room wall to discharge the hot gas outside.

The position of the outlet outside the building should be high enough above any possible walking pedestrians and passenger cars nearby.

Picture 7 below shows the position and height of the engine exhaust pipe outside the generator room wall.

Picture 7 – Engine exhaust and radiator exhaust outside the generator room wall



Both the engine exhaust and the hot air from the the radiator fan are shown in the above picture.

It happens that the side of the wall is right above the access route to the basement level of the building. Therefore, the engine exhaust is very well above the recommended level.

However, the radiator exhaust is at ground level.

But then the location of the radiator is not at any path way. In fact, a planter box has been constructed right in front of the radiator exhaust.

This would help not only keep the passer-bys away from the front of the exhaust grill, but also give a degree of camouflage which would make many architects a little bit happier.

I have a few more pictures to show you on this genset installation, but I am running late to a meeting now.

So I will upload the other pictures after a few days.

Visit this post, Electrical installation pictures, to see other photos that I have uploaded to this blog.



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