Power outage generator test at high school, real power outage simulation, startup load/transfer

If you are interested this is a updated video with more questions answered and another generator test > https://youtu.be/9jkmp7-HMd4?si=xXySY1eyuubViBwX

Damn, that’s one hell of a nice high school

Where I work we are required to shut the main breaker off at least once a year and run the generator under load once a month. They would rather know about problems in a controlled environment. Great video.

In USA hospitals believe the NEC only requires 10 seconds before an emergency generator starts and transfers power. All beds in ICU, NICO & other critical loads had UPS'S to prevent lost of power. Hospital that I retired from had 4 natural gas generators for halve the building. Even after they spent a million dollars to rebuild the 4 generators and new controls they were PIGS. Could not run them at 90% power using load banks ( purely resistive load ) especially in warm weather. They had to install 3 starters along with 3 sets of 1,500 CCA batteries to get these at least one of these pigs started & on line before 10 seconds. Never had that problem with the 12 Diesel gen sets thru out 6 buildings.

A company, I used to work for, built a new 6 story building complete with generator, etc. , a huge CAT diesel. The first full test of the system was about 6 months after everybody had moved in. Everything was going according to plan and suddenly the generator quits. In all the prep work someone failed to fill the fuel tank(s) for the generator, seriously. The second test, a few weeks later happened without incident.

That is one surprisingly fast transition from utility power to the generator springing to life in just 12 seconds! 😮

Great informative video and systems test. With the upmost respect and a piece of humour, you dont even look old enough to leave school however your knowledge, qualifications and presentation skills are highly commendable

In the early 90's one summer I worked in the maintence department at one of the major Drug Store chains (who later got bought bout by CVS). I got to go the one week with them to "test the generators" (there were 3 total between the two buildings). I was first amazed as the size of the engines on them. Then I asked how they run the test. He goes over to a big rocker switch, says "see this? Is the main cut off for the building." Then he simply shut it off. I thought they would do some "simulated" test of getting it to startup.

Ha, just tested our emergency generator today lol. It's a 6 KW unit: if the power gets cut for some reason, we lug it on the balcony to power our servers and, if need be, our satellite uplink. We're a small-ish IT company, but we got our emergency procedures locked down. We'll keep our uptime contracts, even if the rest of the city goes to hell. There just ain't no rest for the wicked.

Thats for sharing my dude. It's awesome to see videos from places most don't get to see.

We were taught to take in a deep breath & ho!d it while operating circuit breakers or safety switches. Reason being if an arc fault occurs you would not breath in air as hot ad 10,000 degrees & burning your lungs. Also taught to stand on one side of a breaker or safety switch while operating. Our chief electrician wanted us to wear our tinted face shield and rubber gloves on while switching anything over 100 amps. In the US we loose an electrician every day thru electrocution, arc fault or an arc blast incident. You stated that you only use two minutes for cool down. All of the 16 generators that we had in 6 buildings had a 5 minute cool down. We had to test run generators every week for 10 minutes and once a month on load banks to prevent wet stacking on diesel gen sets.

At a datacenter I work at there's twelve 2MW generators and a UPS bank large enough to support full load for 15 minutes. When cutting over the lights and AC units go partially/mostly out for around 10 seconds just like in this video. it's kinda scary when it happens unexpectedly while working on the DC floor as lights and DB levels drop by 50%. But the critical load (75% of the load I guess) cannot go out, ever. They do a full cutover at least 4 times per year.

Thanks for posting. I wish I would have done a video of the generator system at the hospital I used to work at. I got to watch them do a manual transfer once, but didn't record it. I have two videos of them running on this channel, but it's them running from the outside. Those generator actually give the hospital 100% generator power during an outage which isn't typical. The hospital I work at now they have two generators, but it's just the red plugs and certain lights which is more common.

“Usually your fuel doesn’t go up from running it” implies that occasionally it has haha😂😂😂 Thanks for filming and posting these types of videos.

Nice clean installation. Instills confidence in client. After looking at the one line diagram, I will make the following suggestion. Add SPDs (Surge Protective Devices) on the load (output) of the transfer switches. The diagram does show a 200kA TVSS (Transient Voltage Surge Suppressor). The industry changed the nomenclature of TVSSs to SPDs about 20-years ago. A 200kA SPD is fairly beefy and a good choice. 200kA means the the SPD is capable of taking one 200,000 transient amp. “Spike” without failing. My recommendation is based on 40-years of industry experience. Once the transfer switches transfer to the generator, there is no protection for the critical loads. The loads are then exposed to whatever transients (spikes) or high-frequency noise the generator may produce. One of our clients generator’s voltage regulator failed and produced an overvoltage which damaged equipment in their data center. One SPD on PNL ED1 and one on PNL EB. We want to protect the front end UPS electronics from being damaged from switching transients from the transfer switch. We also want to capture any reactive spikes that may be generated during an outage when the transfer from generator to utility. Think of a coil (same as a transformer) in a car with the points opening on the primary side and the high voltage spike on the secondary which fires the spark plug. We have seen damage to UPSs and other facility electronics. Quality UPSs have internal bypass switches that wrap-around the guts of the UPS if the UPS senses an internal failure and the utility source is available. We have seen front end spikes “confuse” the UPS Bypass logic and put the UPS into bypass even though the utility is not available or it flickers right after power is restored. Finally, glad to see that there is a delay once the transfer from generator to utility starts. We have seen a push towards high-speed transfer switches. There have been instances where there is stored energy in the electrical distribution, but it is decaying in voltage and frequency. When the utility closes, the two sources are out of sync. This can trip breakers and cause physical damage. Additional SPDs may be warranted on critical equipment. Such as the fryers in the kitchen. We know that the students will get grumpy if they can’t get their fries.

Nice video. Really like that you took the time to identify some of the code requirements around emergency power and system separation. Well done, thank you!!

I wished we had 600 volt here in the US. Higher voltage is always better. Motors start so much more efficiently, current is lower so you can use a smaller wire.

You definitely pass my examination, great job and understanding of things .

Wow this is a great simulation of the generator test, Nice content here Nic!

I didn’t hear the generator sound change at all when the load switched on. Pretty cool.