Ray Your list mirrors mine.
Never. Ever. Ever. Buy or believe you’ll get support of any kind from Generac. I fell for the lure of the ECO GEN and it ate itself one night while helping our off grid home get through a hot cloudy summer day. For my off grid experience since 2005, I would vote for: 1. For Big Systems, I’d vote for a Cummins 1800 water cooled unit. 20kw is great genny for a double stack or more of Radians. They work. Period. After a few tries, a couple customers agreed to water cooled and life is grand. Kohler RES-14 and RES-20 air-cooled units have also been great. For those customers there are big battery banks and the generator is less needed. 2. Kubota GL11000 or GL7000. I have a few in my customer group. I have the GL6000 at my shop. It can be made auto start. Diesel is man-potable. They always start and run and they are water cooled even though they are 3600 rpms, they are quiet. 3. Honda inverter generators. I have several customers with different wattages. I love these. Won’t do much good to put a EU2000i on a 2400Ah bank, but the EU7000i can be auto started in some climates with a 3-wire controller like a XW-AGS. Keep the oil changed. Also. The key here is use vs capacity for use. If you design a system that needs the generator to run every. single. day., you might want to spec a generator that costs more than the solar array. Or have enough battery for a 8x load and solar for 2x or more. The old adage you get what you pay for is still valid in the off grid world. Thank you, Maverick > On Feb 27, 2020, at 4:25 PM, Ray <[email protected]> wrote: > > I know we have covered this before, but I just continue to be disappointed > with the Generac Ecogen. Very high failure rate, and support is poor. > Service requires expensive on site service. Also the no load AC draw and > programming setup is just not off grid ready at all. I'm still not seeing > any other great choices, though. Here's some other possibilities: > > 1) Quality portable, like the Honda EU 7000i or Northstar with Honda motor. > Not the best choice especially for autostart, no propane, but at least they > can take it in to the shop if it goes down. > > 2) Kubota (or MQ) diesel. expensive, and possible cold weather start issues? > > 3) 20+ kW water cooled, 1800 rpm propane model. Overkill, expensive, but > probably will last a really long time. > > 4) Similar Home standby unit, but Kohler brand. Kohler used to be great, but > now a days I'm not so sure. > > I just can't keep recommending a generator I know has been giving other > customers trouble. Any new ideas on this age old problem? > > -- > Ray Walters > Remote Solar > 303 505-8760 > > _______________________________________________ > List sponsored by Redwood Alliance > > List Address: [email protected] > > Change listserver email address & settings: > http://lists.re-wrenches.org/options.cgi/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org > > List-Archive: > http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html > > List rules & etiquette: > www.re-wrenches.org/etiquette.htm > > Check out or update participant bios: > www.members.re-wrenches.org > _______________________________________________ List sponsored by Redwood Alliance List Address: [email protected] Change listserver email address & settings: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/options.cgi/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List-Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html List rules & etiquette: www.re-wrenches.org/etiquette.htm Check out or update participant bios: www.members.re-wrenches.org
