test & measurement

Emergency Generator
Load Meter
No-break AC power
for your home
Use this Load Meter to prevent overloading your emergency
generator during blackouts, so that when tropical storm force winds
or vicious ice storms have crippled the power grid you are reassured
of your generator steadily providing power for your home.

By Chuck Hansen (USA) backup generator

by connecting the
t wo bus bars in
After loss of power here in the northeast USA due to ice storms in parallel. The transfer
winter and hurricanes in summer, I invested in a portable 2500 watt panel meters are
emergency AC generator with 2800 watt surge capability. It can out of circuit when
power our furnace, refrigerator, hot water heater, and selected the transfer switch
outlets and lights. I had our electrician install a 60 amp power is connected to the
transfer sub-panel that can connect the above loads to either utility main breaker panel.
utility power or an emergency backup AC source. The transfer sub- The particular generator I purchased combines a high-voltage
panel we installed has eight load circuit breakers and two 0-2500 W permanent magnet generator with a single phase sine-wave power
load meters on the front to measure the power delivered by an AC inverter, to ensure compatibility with the electronic controls on our
emergency power source. However, the transfer sub-panel is in the appliances. It also has an economy mode that allows it to operate
basement next to the main breaker panel, and I really need to know at a lower fuel-saving rpm until the load demand becomes high
what the load draw is upstairs in our living space in order to best enough to require the generator to run at high rpm.
estimate the refuelling time for the generator. We had a weather-proof single-phase 30 amp recreational vehicle
(RV) outdoor connector installed to match the 30 amp twist-lock
How it works connector on the generator output panel and connect it to our
The transfer panel can be wired for the split-phase 120-0-120 VAC house with a 15 foot (4.6 meter) 8-gauge (8 mm2) power cable.
electrical service here in the US, or for our single-phase 120 VAC
I purchased a 150:1 ratio current transformer (CT) on eBay that had
the appropriate UL/CE qualifications (it is very important that the
CT meets all applicable local codes). My electrician routed both blue
wires that feed the eight circuit breakers in the sub-panel through
the centre of the CT in an additive manner (see Figure 1). This is the
one-turn CT primary winding. The CT secondary winding divides
the primary current by the turns ratio, in this case by 150. The CT
is rated for 5 VA, so in theory it can produce a secondary voltage of
about 31 VRMS (200 Ω load) with the maximum 23.33 amp surge
load rating of our generator without saturation. This is more than
enough for our remote load meter.

Schematics
The schematic for the sub-panel and load meter circuit is shown in
Figure 2. Note that for clarity the sub-panel drawing shows only
the ac power leads, not the mandatory neutral and safety ground
wires that connect to the grounding block in the sub-panel. The CT
is located on the emergency generator input side of the sub-panel,
Figure 1. CT installation in the sub-panel. as described above.

64 02-2012 elektor
test & measurement

RECTIFIER/SURGE LIMITER

WALL PLATE METER BOX

D1 D3
D5 J1 J2
C1

R1 Rcal
100n

1R50
D2 D4
1W mA
4x STPS2150 1N5907

60A A 20A
Emergency Generator Main
Grid B
(Neutral and ground conductors not shown)
150 turns

SUB-PANEL TRANSFER SW 110736 - 11

Figure 2. Schematic for the sub-panel and load meter circuit.

Advertisement

Elektor App for iPhone

and iPad
The Elektor Electronic
Toolbox
USB STC 8051 MCU Programmer
Elektor now offers an App you Free For 8051 Developers
cannot afford to miss on your
iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad.
$0
The Elektor Electronic Toolbox is
a collection of no fewer than SIM900A GSM Module
28 electronic tools that can be Small,Low Cost,Easy To Develope
picked from a comprehensive set
of icons!
$36
Highlights:
– Databases for Transistors, FETs, NRF2401 2.4G Transceiver Module
Small,Versatile,Simple,Ultra Low Power
Triacs, Thyristors, Diodes and ICs
– NE555 circuit design
Now available fr
om $7.5
– An Ohms Law calculator St ore
– Schematic Diagrams the Apple iTunes !
4. 99
– Number base converter for just $5.99 / € LM3886 68Wx2 HiFi Audio Amplifier
– LED / resistor calculation HiFi Sound At Affordable Price
– R/L and BJT calculations
– And more
$49.9
Further information at

www.elektor.com/app

elektor 02-2012 65
test & measurement

I1
240V
60Hz I1
To SUB-PANEL/
I2 TRANSFER SW 230V To SUB-PANEL/
50Hz TRANSFER SW
I2

110736 - 12
110736 - 13

Figure 3a and b. Alternative configurations of the CT for different power systems.

The CT secondary is hard-wired to a plastic rectifier/surge limiter I made use of an EM-100 electronic energy meter to verify the
box I designed for this project. The CT secondary wiring is twisted calibration, using two toaster ovens as loads. I used 63.4 Ω for Rcal
to minimize stray magnetic fields. The components are mounted (this is only about a 2% correction... we engineers can get quite
on a small piece of prototyping pc board. The secondary current is tweaky at times). I added red marker to the meter scale in the area
full-wave rectified by four Schottky diodes, D1-D4. D5, a 1N5907 above 100% to show when the generator is in its surge current-
transient voltage suppressor (TVS), limits the CT secondary voltage limit mode.
in case the two-conductor wiring to the load meter burden resistor The voltage across the 1.50 Ω resistor in the wall plate is
on the main floor is accidentally opened. approximately 233 mVDC at 2800 W. The fixed drop across each
rectifier is 300 mV (600 mV total per half-cycle), and the voltage
The CT is a current source, so the secondary can be safely short- drop across the total of 80 feet (24 meters) AWG-16 (1.3 mm 2)
circuited, but it does not like to see an open circuit. The secondary interconnect wire is 50 mV. Thus the CT secondary voltage is only
voltage will be multiplied by the turns ratio times the voltage drop 883 mV, or 137 mVA at 2800 W. This is well below the 5 VA rating
in the length of the primary wires inside the core aperture. Since of the CT. The load meter can be disconnected from the wall plate
the silicon iron core has a high magnetic permeability, the drop in at any time without any adverse effect on the CT, since load resistor
the primary side is significant at higher loads and the open-circuit R1 is located inside the wall plate.
secondary voltage could be lethal. The 100 nF capacitor (C1) filters
any voltage spikes that might occur on the CT secondary signal. Changes for 240 V 230 V grids
The 1.50 Ohms CT load resistor (R1) across which the load meter In order to make the system suitable for other power systems, I
signal is generated is located in the main floor wall plate right at have sketched up two additional configurations, one for a North
the BNC connector (I modified a standard 75 Ω F-video jack wall American 240 V system and one for a European 230 V system. The
plate). Since this is a low voltage application, code allows us CT secondary connection remains as shown in Figure 2. The value
to use an open-back ‘new work’ electrical box inside the wall to of load resistor R1 as well as Rcal may have to be adjusted to match
mount the wall plate. This BNC jack will not be confused for any the different voltages.
other common household signal connector (RCA, F-video, RJ-44
telephone, Ethernet, etc). Since the North American AC grid has split 120/240 VAC lines, the
phase currents (shown as I1 and I2 in Figure 3a) are not only out-
Measuring of-phase, but are also likely not equal. As a result, one of the phase
I selected a 0-100 mADC analogue panel meter for our remote wires must enter the CT aperture from the opposing side in order
power indicator, which I calibrated to show 0-100% load from the to sum rather than cancel the out-of-phase currents.
generator. I used a sloped-front aluminium enclosure for this load
meter (see introductory photograph). The enclosure contains a BNC With the European 230 VAC balanced centre-earth connection
input connector, the load meter and a resistor, Rcal, located directly (Figure 3b) the I1 and I2 currents are always equal and opposite.
across the load meter terminals. The load meter is connected to the The CT may be connected like the North American 240 VAC AC
wall plate by a short BNC cable. Since the CT is a current source, the power connection in Figure 3a, or alternatively only one of the two
voltage drop across the full-wave rectifiers and the wiring to the first power conductors can pass through the CT aperture as shown in
floor wall plate will not create any error at the load meter. Figure 3b. The CT secondary current of Figure 3b will be half that
of the Figure 3a connection, so load resistor R1 may have to be
Rcal allows for fine calibration of the load meter to be equivalent increased in order to reach full scale on the percent load meter.
to the 2500 W full load from the generator at 100 mA full scale. (110736)

66 02-2012 elektor