PTO Generators
Sunday, September 28th, 2008
Hi Jeff,
New to the website I love what I see and sure enough will be back many times.
I just purchased a Kubota BX24 diesel tractor and I am now looking into setting my house up with a back up PTO Generator. The PTO runs at 540 RPM with appox 17.5 hp at the rear PTO. Can I run effectively a 11-15 KW generator off this PTO? Second I am also wondering if I run this tractor at 1800 rpm will the PTO still run effectively? Thank you for you time and consideration.
Best regards,
David Petricone
David:
Nice tractor! Yes, you should be able to power most of your home’s loads during an emergency, if you select the right generator. I had a recent client living off grid who was using a tractor-driven generator to re-charge his battery bank on the days his solar output was low. However, he was having all kinds of problems and was blaming his inverters. He wanted us to send his two inverters back for factory repair. After checking his system, we found the problem was his low cost PTO generator had very poor power regulation which was causing the inverters to keep dis-connecting due to an out of spec voltage and frequency.
A 12 to 15 kW generator will be large enough for most residential applications, and should not overload a 17 HP diesel PTO. All PTO designed generators have built-in gear boxes that take the standard 540 RPM input speed and increase it to what is required for the specific generator (usually 1800 RPM). If your generator includes a high quality power output controller, this will hold the voltage output fairly constant even if the speed varies up or down.
Good luck.
Jeff
