V
Vaughn Simon
We took delivery of our second Yamaha EF1000is where I work. Our plan is to run
one tank of fuel through each and then put them on the shelf to (hopefully)
never be used again, so I decided to evaluate this second one on my own time and
try to produce some useful information for the group. First of all the basic
results:
1) First I connected it to my 2-door 22 cubic foot refrigerator to see if the
little Yamaha could even start it...it did. Once running the 'fridge, I added
the circuit to my study and started turning things on. When I was done, the
little guy was revving at max while running my desktop computer with all of its
accessories, my 13" CRT color TV, a CF Lamp, and the ceiling fan. I have a
(very approximate) watt meter on my transfer panel, and it was reading about
6-700 watts with all that stuff connected. A moment later, the defrost cycle
started on my refrigerator, and I was suddenly reading something over 1000
watts. I quickly removed the study circuit, and the load settled down to a
steady 600 watts (the defrost heaters in the refrigerator)
2) After that brief first test, I carefully refilled the tank (.66 Gal) to the
mark and restarted to discover how long it would run my refrigerator on one
tank. Results: 11 Hours.
Earlier, the other Yamaha barely even seemed to notice our 15 cubic foot shop
refrigerator and ran for about 14 hours. I was very interested to see how it
would do on this larger unit. There are two issues we need to be concerned
about when considering running these large boxes with such a minimal generator;
1) starting surge and 2) defrost load. "Frost Free" refrigerators have
substantial heaters that run periodically in place of the compressor, to defrost
the evaporator. Unfortunately, these heaters draw more than the compressor, but
fortunately they have very little startup surge compared to a motor.
CONCLUSIONS: If you are looking for low-noise operation that wrings the absolute
most hours of operation from a gallon of operation, and are willing to settle
for just running your refrigerator and perhaps a few other low-drain items, the
Yamaha EF1000is will PROBABLY do the job for you. The reason I say probably is
that you can't know until you try it with your own refrigerator. If your box
has too much starting surge, you can try a "hard start kit" which connects to
the innards of your refrigerator with only two wires and should significantly
reduce your unit's starting surge . (For hard start kits try here;
http://www.supco.com/eclass.htm and then Google for more knowledge) Caution:
This is the Internet and I am talking about something I have never tried myself.
@ $3.00/gallon the EF1000is will run my refrigerator for (.66 X 3.00 / 9 ) 22
cents per hour. If you were reasonable frugal, this unit and 10 gallons of gas
could keep you going for a full week with refrigeration, and small loads such as
a fan, a few CF lights, a small TV and your cellphone charger.
For comparison, my little Honda EM600 will barely run for 8 hours on .5 gallon
of gas (light load) and will never (even on its best day) start my refrigerator.
The Yamaha comes with a 2-year warranty for home use (1 year for commercial).
The pollution tag indicates that it is intended for "extended" operation, the
highest of three ratings.
Regards
Vaughn
one tank of fuel through each and then put them on the shelf to (hopefully)
never be used again, so I decided to evaluate this second one on my own time and
try to produce some useful information for the group. First of all the basic
results:
1) First I connected it to my 2-door 22 cubic foot refrigerator to see if the
little Yamaha could even start it...it did. Once running the 'fridge, I added
the circuit to my study and started turning things on. When I was done, the
little guy was revving at max while running my desktop computer with all of its
accessories, my 13" CRT color TV, a CF Lamp, and the ceiling fan. I have a
(very approximate) watt meter on my transfer panel, and it was reading about
6-700 watts with all that stuff connected. A moment later, the defrost cycle
started on my refrigerator, and I was suddenly reading something over 1000
watts. I quickly removed the study circuit, and the load settled down to a
steady 600 watts (the defrost heaters in the refrigerator)
2) After that brief first test, I carefully refilled the tank (.66 Gal) to the
mark and restarted to discover how long it would run my refrigerator on one
tank. Results: 11 Hours.
Earlier, the other Yamaha barely even seemed to notice our 15 cubic foot shop
refrigerator and ran for about 14 hours. I was very interested to see how it
would do on this larger unit. There are two issues we need to be concerned
about when considering running these large boxes with such a minimal generator;
1) starting surge and 2) defrost load. "Frost Free" refrigerators have
substantial heaters that run periodically in place of the compressor, to defrost
the evaporator. Unfortunately, these heaters draw more than the compressor, but
fortunately they have very little startup surge compared to a motor.
CONCLUSIONS: If you are looking for low-noise operation that wrings the absolute
most hours of operation from a gallon of operation, and are willing to settle
for just running your refrigerator and perhaps a few other low-drain items, the
Yamaha EF1000is will PROBABLY do the job for you. The reason I say probably is
that you can't know until you try it with your own refrigerator. If your box
has too much starting surge, you can try a "hard start kit" which connects to
the innards of your refrigerator with only two wires and should significantly
reduce your unit's starting surge . (For hard start kits try here;
http://www.supco.com/eclass.htm and then Google for more knowledge) Caution:
This is the Internet and I am talking about something I have never tried myself.
@ $3.00/gallon the EF1000is will run my refrigerator for (.66 X 3.00 / 9 ) 22
cents per hour. If you were reasonable frugal, this unit and 10 gallons of gas
could keep you going for a full week with refrigeration, and small loads such as
a fan, a few CF lights, a small TV and your cellphone charger.
For comparison, my little Honda EM600 will barely run for 8 hours on .5 gallon
of gas (light load) and will never (even on its best day) start my refrigerator.
The Yamaha comes with a 2-year warranty for home use (1 year for commercial).
The pollution tag indicates that it is intended for "extended" operation, the
highest of three ratings.
Regards
Vaughn
