Generator Power Electrical Problems

Computer surge suppressor units can be had at any number of retail outlets worldwide.

110VAC from a small generator cannot be "dirty" enough to cause damage to any of those devices. All of them have power supplies in them which will provide a constant output to your electronics and chargers. The danger to the power supplies from the line side is primarily transient spikes and surges, both of which are nearly impossible to get out of a small capacity generator (unless it gets hit by lightning!).

Take along a power strip that has surge protection in it, that will take care of the minor transients caused by the refrigerator compressor coming on and off.

A generator usually always has a capacity limit. there's no danger of spiking, just the possibility of low capacity to meet your aggregated needs.

Take what you need, yeah, including any filters you think you may need. Never heard of them myself, but they may be available.

you may also want to make sure you have enough fuel for the generator.

When we where kids .we had a remote cabin in N.H. without electricity.

We acquired a generator and thought FINALY we could have TV. it ran great for a few happy minutes and then began smoking .

I would be careful with sensitive computer equipment .

Any way to charge through a 12 volt battery I have seen many applications with computers in vehicle ,the police for example .

Putting a battery in front might offer protection .

sounds like you may want to take a quality multimeter just to be on the safe side, and test the supply.

Get yourself an APC Universal Power Supply. They have surge suppression and filtering capabilities. You can actually set the voltage high and low thresholds with the provided software. This will give you backup power for those moments of power loss , voltage filtering - both transient and small fluctuations like 108 volts minimum and 130 volts maximum for example, and surge suppression.

I agree on getting a UPS. The brownout or low voltage occurrences that do happen are controlled by the UPS. If you get one with the monitoring software, you will be surprised to see how irregular your incoming power can be.

thanks for the feed back..........i never thought of a UPS, but that sounds like the way to go.........when we were in St Croix last year, i think we cooked our little AA battery charger even though we thought that the power there was fine.

Something weird was happening with the power supply though. One night we were watching the moths fly around an incandescent light on the back porch, and it was as if it was a strobe light.. there was about 100 stop frame images of the moth as it circled around, i could almost accept that if it was a flourescent bulb ........

thankfully, we actually got a good picture of it, because at first we thought that we had drank too many rum drinks.......we had just come back from visiting the Cruzan rum factory...

I'll post a pic of the moth tomorrow.

if i were u i would buy a generater that would power all of what i needed to power

look at the generators closely see what the ranges are for what u need and take filters and gas and oil for this trip never can be over loaded with supplies

lol....we will only be there for 2 weeks on vacation............

sorry about the misunderstanding.

if all you want to do is charge batterys buy a solar powered charger "clean" as you can get ... and much less bulky. Maybe a little inverter to dc then hook up your car charger ... they have regulaters. If your woried bout the fridge ... dont ... generater will work fine.

i bought this for the trip...only weighs 7 pounds

http://www.computers4sure.com/product.asp?productid=5466837&iid=1252&Hits=2&HKeyword=EN400

the UPS arrived......DOA....they are sending me a new one, and paying for shipping the old one back.........excelent customer survice

can't seem to to locate the pic of the moth, but i know it is on my computer somewhere

Would love to see the moth photos.Would happen if the frequency of the supply has dropped ( generator running at lower speed).. If the generator capacity is just enough to take care of fridges and other household equipments, i would suggest not to use them, or shut off the one that effects the comfort the least, while you are using laptop. The voltage spikes/sags will be higher on a fully loaded small generator than a lightly loaded gennie. enjoy your stay..

found it

on a side note...............i got the second power supply and when it appeared that it had the same problem i actually read the instructions.......and found out i had to open the case and put the positive lead on the battery................boy, do i feel stupid