Generators: Inverter or Standard

[GarrettBlake]

I had a Smarter Tools 7500 dual fuel generator (no inverter) that worked fine with powering the house with the exception of operating the pool cover motor. The Ford mobile charger would throw errors with it however. I sold that and got a Duramax inverter generator and it works just fine with the Ford mobile charger and the pool cover motor. Certainly worth the cost difference.

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[RLXXI]

People with solar panel setups use inverter generators to convert the DC from the panels, perhaps stored in batteries as well, into AC for their homes and/or to send to the grid.

Only addressing this part of your post as I am one of those people with solar panel setups. 2 separate systems actually, one is grid tied, the other is not. We/I do not use an inverter generator of any type. It's just an inverter for dc ac dc conversion for charging a dc battery array and ac for home use.

Any generator we/I might use is completely independent of the solar system. In my case, I use an EG4 12000XP inverter. It doesn't generate anything, it only provides electrical pathways both ac and dc.

My choice of whole home gen is an 18kW Generac that only gets used long enough after a grid failure to switch over to my battery array for home power.

 

[ZSC100]

Hopefully, your EVSE and the Lightnings have good filtering to protect from THD issues.

THD of pretty much any amount that you can encounter with the shittiest generator you can find is not a problem for the on board charger (or any EVSE I've tested with). The first stage of power electronics in an EV's on board charger is a full wave bridge rectifier and a massive bank of capacitors. It doesn't care about THD. It doesn't even care if it's AC.

 

[RLXXI]

Yea, if I was richer than a middle class electrical engineer I'd go out and buy this right now for CWD testing.

https://www.lowes.com/pd/Ford-Tri-fuel-Portable-Generator/5016769813

Any generator over 20kW is going to be big enough to have good mechanical inertia, physical winding accuracy, and a stable exciter capacity to provide clean enough power for any application. Also, I bet this thing can generate 19kW without breaking a sweat. To bad I'm also not rich enough to own an ER with dual onboard chargers

My 18kW Generac home backup does just fine and with <5% THD.

 

[Muffin_Man]

Appreciate all the input on this topic, I've learned a lot - key being low THD. What started this was my current genset giving me issues while charging the UPS at my computer desk. Last winter (before I got my lightning) we lost power for a week during an ice storm and the UPS at my computer desk would not charge consistently on the gen. I figured if the power is that lousy coming out of it then I should look into getting another that has cleaner power as well as more capacity to charge the truck at a full 11KW. The specs on the unit I have currently are pretty dismal, less than 23% if I'm reading this correctly; https://westinghouse.com/products/wgen9500df-generator-dual-fuel

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