On Sun, 26 Apr 2015 17:38:42 +0000 (UTC), Diesel 
wrote:

>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>Hash: SHA1
>
>MadAdmin 
>news:an2qjaltisvkpuv3hcrlolo0f4esijvrdv@4ax.com Sun, 26 Apr 2015
>16:00:49 GMT in alt.politics.scorched-earth, wrote: 
>
>> Last time I looked at batteries 6volt were still around although
>> not too many but there are definitely a few bikes that used them
>> and I think some lawn equipment and such too. I've not personally
>> seen a generator that had one but it's certainly probable. To be
>> honest most of the generators I've seen needed some SERIOUS juice
>> to turn over often having motors that would look at home in
>> something like an AC4400CW....
>
>LOL! The last time I saw a 6volt battery start generator, you could
>also start it with the pull rope, in the event the starter and/or
>battery was dead. 
>
>You couldn't run a microwave off of it. Worked great for a few drop
>lights though and your chargers. Nothing you'd spend the money on
>for an automatic switch, that's for damn sure. 
>
>The generators I've installed aren't portable. They tend to be
>diesel or propane and start from a car battery, or in some cases, a
>bank of them. If you tried to start one on a 3volt 4amp battery,
>you'd just toast the battery and might hear a relay try to
>open/close. [g] Assuming the control panel would allow the system to
>try and start. Some panels tend to ignore start requests when
>battery power isn't between 10-12 volts or so. Instead of startup,
>you get an alarm. "Beep beep beep, battery is too low! beep beep
>beep" 
>

Yeah I can imagine. What little I've dealt with generators has been
moderate to freaking huge. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away I
got to tinker with Z80 based control systems for generators that
usually were linked with a motor-generator setup that was basically an
electric motor tied to a 5000lb or so flywheel tied to a generator.
When the main dropped the motor-generator computer sent a start signal
to the diesel generator computer and then sampled the frequency coming
out of the motor-generator so it could slowly move the stators to keep
the frequency solid as the flywheel slowly wound down until the diesel
signalled it was online. Then the transfer switch would flip and the
diesel would handle things until the main came back up.

I never did anything with the actual generators though - just trained
on the controllers and got to play with some of them and got to
scavenge one of them that used a 8085 that I was going to use as the
basis for a robot.
--- NewsGate v1.0 gamma 2