Running a Lincoln Weldanpower on propane

[Welder Dave]

Some big generators run at 1200 RPM. Amp rating of a generator is not the same as amps on your house circuit. That's why you need a much larger generator to power an air compressor or welder even though the generator is rated for more amps.

[wasillashack]

Thanks to all who responded, lots of good info posted here. I worked at Westinghouse Apparatus Repair Division , some times called Industry Services Division, so I am acquainted with RPM ranges, starting ratings, continuous ratings, amps vs. watts etc The reason for my post was to find out how much power was lost by converting a B&S 16 HP 531 CC engine to propane fuel, as an additional question, has anyone done this particular conversion and any pitfalls they may have encountered along the way. Thanks

[FlyFishn]

Just an FYI for you guys depending on generator power.... You should also pick up a 800-1000 running watt power inverter. Connected to your car/truck battery, these will run most fridges/freezers, fans, lights, etc.. They aren't going to run an electric coffee maker or a microwave. Never a bad idea to have a redundancy. Depending on how you set up the connections, anyone can connect it when needed and use it without any worries about reverse polarity. Our inverters have saved me the effort of pulling out my Onan gensets on a couple of occasions.

I used to work with commercial RF systems and used a service monitor (spectrum analyzer, rf analyzer, signal generator, etc) out of my work truck. The monitor I have is an old Agilent 8935 that is AC only. So I got a power inverter to run it. A lot of what I did was site surveys during the licensing process for transmitter locations. We worked with a coordination service that screwed us the first round by giving us dedicated frequencies for each location. Some of those frequencies were already in-use and our equipment had problems. So ever since then I requested at least 5 possible frequencies per location and I went out to the coverage area and surveyed the segment of the band covering the possible frequencies. That was 5 locations per location - center (transmitter location) and 4 points around the coverage circle. Each stop could be an hour or so of monitoring/recording. That meant that the service monitor had to have uninterrupted power for that duration.

The irony of it was the CFO made us install telematics systems in our trucks because upper management wanted to cut back on engine idle time and wanted to see where their vehicles were and had been. As is very common in a lot of industries (farming, construction equipment, over the road trucks, you name it) - idle time is a big thing in todays day in age due to fuel costs. And I had to idle most of the day. Kinda funny how that worked (doesn't beat the one where the CFO flew to Florida for a conference and got a call 2 days later his SUV was idling in the parking lot of the airport...true story).

However, yes - inverters can provide some decent AC power. The more battery power you have the better. That is the heart of off-grid power systems, whether that be solar or wind, or both. The power has to be stored somewhere so when the sun isn't shining or wind isn't blowing there is power (grid tie or inverter-based is totally different - but without the power source - sun or wind - without batteries to store you have no power, so you're still back to batteries being the heart of an off-grid system). Until I got my inverter generator (honda EU2200i) a 12vdc inverter was how I got most of my portable AC power for running tools etc. Now I don't bother hooking it up - I just fire up the little generator. Its more convenient for me, and it really does sip fuel idling with low power draw.