I have about a 15 year old Troy Bilt 5500 watt generator. Hardly gets used and is reliable and runs great. Running it today during an outage I was doing a voltage check and I am only getting115 volts. I would like to get at least 120 volts. I can do this by pushing on the governor and speeding it up just a bit. Is there any way that I can permanently adjust the speed up a little?
Can I Adjust Running Speed on Generator
- Thread starter walterjay
- Start date
It needs to run at 3600 RPM to give you 60 Hz. Huge ones run at 1800 RPM.
You should certainly measure it with a frequency meter and get it to 60 Hz. But it need to run at 60 Hz unless all you are doing is powering incandescent bulbs.
An inverter is different also.
You should certainly measure it with a frequency meter and get it to 60 Hz. But it need to run at 60 Hz unless all you are doing is powering incandescent bulbs.
An inverter is different also.
Set the governor on the engine to 3600 RPM and unless your are really experiencing a problem with some item running at 115 VAC forget about it.
House Voltage in the U.S. use to be 110 RMS AC and it was slowly increased over the years to the current 120 to 127 but almost all items will run without any problem on 115.
Donald is correct in that the RPMs of the generator controls the frequency of the power produced and that should be 60 Cycles Per Second. Some motors such as most motors on refrigerators and freezers will try to spin too fast if you increase the frequency beyond 60 Hz.
House Voltage in the U.S. use to be 110 RMS AC and it was slowly increased over the years to the current 120 to 127 but almost all items will run without any problem on 115.
Donald is correct in that the RPMs of the generator controls the frequency of the power produced and that should be 60 Cycles Per Second. Some motors such as most motors on refrigerators and freezers will try to spin too fast if you increase the frequency beyond 60 Hz.
This is a perfect example of someone doing something but having no idea what it is that they are doing, or if it is even a good idea.
Useless comment of the day.
It is completely relevant. The voltage does not need to be raised, and you don't do that by increasing the governed speed of the generator which controls the frequency.
Instead of coming off as helpful, your comment came off as a dig at the OP , not helpful or necessary. We all learn somewhere.
My HF ones have a screw that adjusts speed. I turned up my 900w once. It was only putting out 95v and like 50hz. Turning it up to 115c got it real close to 60hz.
Update...thank you for most of the comments that I have received. I appreciate the helpful ones. I found that the problem was with my analog meter. I dug out a good digital unit and found that I was operating at 121 volts and the frequency is 61.2 cycles per second under a light load. Thank you again to all of the folks who sent helpful and thoughtful replies.
That’s useful.
The meter you use has an effect too. Many of the lower cost generators may not make a perfect AC waveform. Many of the lower cost meters may not read ac real accurately. There may be distortions. You have to have a type of meter called True RMS to accurately read the voltage. Anything over 110V is good.
Rod
Rod
