Lots of failing outdoor LED lamps...very long overhead mains cable.

[T3sl4co1l]

@treez - did you do surge testing as part of compliance testing ?
I'm not too familiar with the standards for CE marking in lighting, but ISTR EN61000-4-5 (surge) and EN61000-4-4 (fast transients) are both included in generic EMC immunity requirements.

In a couple other threads he's shown a toy he created for this.  It delivers pissant pulses, with incorrect timing and polarity anyway.  He believes it to be a valid test, despite being told otherwise numerous times here.

Tim

[Nusa]

Are the lights the sole load on the generator? I could see someone's chest freezer putting some lovely spikes on the line every time the motor starts.

Is there a relationship between the failures and distance from the generator?

[fourtytwo42]

I have a new theory that treez is in fact a plant  , placed deliberatly here to wind everybody up and create a disinformational climate .

Could this indeed be related to the sources of fake news stories often talked about now. The continious postings over several months of sensational increadable theories could surely only come from a fake source

Maybe we are being distracted from something we should really be looking at or the idea is to fry the brains of everybody on this site 

[T3sl4co1l]

I have a new theory that treez is in fact a plant  , placed deliberatly here to wind everybody up and create a disinformational climate .

Heh, fancy, but unlikely.  He's been around several forums for probably 10 years or more.

His, erm, professional design methodology shall we say, has not evolved over the years.

Tim

[tggzzz]

I have a new theory that treez is in fact a plant  , placed deliberatly here to wind everybody up and create a disinformational climate .

Heh, fancy, but unlikely.  He's been around several forums for probably 10 years or more.

His, erm, professional design methodology shall we say, has not evolved over the years.

Ten years? That surprises me, but is worth knowing.

Mind you, your comments fit with my very tentative guesses. Shame

[Cyberdragon]

I have a new theory that treez is in fact a plant  , placed deliberatly here to wind everybody up and create a disinformational climate .

Oh...I think you meant that kind of...

I was imagining an evil sentient ficus using a computer...

[T3sl4co1l]

I was imagining an evil sentient ficus using a computer...

On the internet, no one knows that you're a [something]...

Tim

[Siwastaja]

His, erm, professional design methodology shall we say, has not evolved over the years.

Stress might be a contributing factor.

When these LED fixture topics first started to appear, I thought: great, we have an honest engineer who designs with the help of this forum, we'll get a lots of great info from all the replies!

We indeed have got some great technical posts (thank you Tim for being possibly the biggest contributor), but strangely, it doesn't seem to help the original poster go forward in their designs (or does so extremely slowly). (However, it has definitely helped others.)

Actually I was cynical of other people being so cynical about their methodologies in the start. I mean, something in their methodology sounded familiar of how I work, and I find I've been succesful and have learned a lot - despite, and sometimes even thanks to low budgets and "unprofessional" settings (and making some treez-like mistakes that would have been avoidable with money and organization)!

It's hard to understand why they are so stuck. treez seems to work hard, so we should start seeing some good results. This is why I'm suggesting stress: it narrows your mind, and you start focusing on just survival using the "nearest" methods available, even if they are unbeneficial in the long run (and disastrous to scientific thinking). Such methods include blaming UFOs etc.

If he's the only actual engineer in the company, it tends to deepen the stressful situation, since you have no "peers" to vent your engineering stress (and actually think about engineering solutions). Instead, you have the management, and way too often, you need those sick "professional" social strategies with the management, including blame shifting. Too often, the management simply cannot accept this idea: "these things just fail sometimes due to human error, now we have to find the root cause, learn, and then we can avoid this mistake in the future!". Instead, the management corners you, forcing you to unconsciously defend the original mistake, which prevents you from learning. It takes a lot of self control to ignore confusion caused by the management and just go on the open-minded engineering/scientific way.

[tggzzz]

treez: you complain about the lack of engineering peers in your company, and the lack of mentoring.

Have you considered joining the local branch of professional organisations, e.g. the IET. One of their raison d'etres is to provide mentoring, local support and networking.

[dmills]

Oh...I think you meant that kind of...
I was imagining an evil sentient ficus using a computer...

"Feed me Seymour!"

[stj]

it's winter, are the zeners and reference rated down to negative temps??

btw, i'm a not working u.k. engineer.
i will explain the biggest problem - employment agency's
most company's insist on using them, but they are bandits.
they dont care what the skillset of the person is - they just send people to places who cant really do the job.
then take atleast half their wages and often commit tax fraud.

result,
engineers get robbed and sent to do jobs they arent suitable for,
company's get the wrong people,
slave traders get paid!!!

personally i will *never* lift a finger for any company that insists on robbing it's workers via a slave agency.
i wont even give them my name - you *know* the management arent giving 60% of earnings to a middleman and not having national insurance paid, or being asked to pay it twice!!
so why should the real workers???

[Kjelt]

btw, i'm a not working u.k. engineer.
i will explain the biggest problem - employment agency's
most company's insist on using them, but they are bandits.
slave traders get paid!!!

Well aren't all companies a kind of slave holders?
They pay just enough to make your living and save a little bit, but too little so you can retire and quit after 20 years of hard work, thereby holding you ransom till they think you are old and retire you.
Then the governments raises the pension age and almost nobody will ever see retirement from active duty.
If you look at the amount of some jobs companies seek and can't find and fly in foreigners from India and further to get them here, those salaries should have quadruppled in the mean time, but they didn't.
The salaries are relative to inflation the same as 15 years ago and lower than 30 years ago 
The profit of those companies have doubled, tripled and more in some cases.

Anyway back to reality, if you work even for an employment agency, you earn money which you do not if you do not work, so little choice there.
Maybe we should think of ourselves as stakeholders in the company we work for. Then I always think of the Asterix & Obelix comic with the merchant captain hiring "stakeholders" in his enterprise and those stakeholders end up rowing the boat while the captain sits on his *ss

[T3sl4co1l]

It's hard to understand why they are so stuck. treez seems to work hard, so we should start seeing some good results. This is why I'm suggesting stress: it narrows your mind, and you start focusing on just survival using the "nearest" methods available, even if they are unbeneficial in the long run (and disastrous to scientific thinking). Such methods include blaming UFOs etc.

That's a very good point.

I learned long ago to take confidence in my work -- to the extent that I can, given that I make mistakes from time to time -- and that my situation is more like,



That is, it's a bigger loss to them than to me if I left, and the only way I'm getting fired is if they simply don't need the engineering anymore.

I'm never short of work; even if I run out of clients, I can develop my own projects, or take a salaried position at a half dozen companies in the area or abroad.

I take confidence in my work, and only take clients who see and respect that work.

This unfortunately isn't very helpful for someone of lesser skill -- if there's always someone ready to replace you, what good are you, at all?  You've got to cover your ass and survive.  Right?

I don't have a good solution for that.  It's a positive feedback system, you've got to break the loop somehow.  Find employers who will support you, even in your bad decisions.  An intolerant environment is no fun, period, no matter where you are.  If nothing else, you should be safe for months or years at a time, contingent on performance or completion of a project, say.

And hey, if the UK labor market is as tight as described, you must be doing something right by filling that demand.  Maybe there aren't that many in line behind you, after all?

Tim

[chris_leyson]

We suspect that maybe there is some kind of transmission line effect going on, with the long mains cable.

I think your hunch might be right treez. Given that the line isn't "terminated" so to speak a transient or step at the generator end might give overvolts at the open end and then it's just up to the non-linear distributed load to absorb the transient voltage. Did most of the failures happen at the far end ?

[nctnico]

His, erm, professional design methodology shall we say, has not evolved over the years.

Stress might be a contributing factor.

When these LED fixture topics first started to appear, I thought: great, we have an honest engineer who designs with the help of this forum, we'll get a lots of great info from all the replies!

We indeed have got some great technical posts (thank you Tim for being possibly the biggest contributor), but strangely, it doesn't seem to help the original poster go forward in their designs (or does so extremely slowly). (However, it has definitely helped others.)

Actually I was cynical of other people being so cynical about their methodologies in the start. I mean, something in their methodology sounded familiar of how I work, and I find I've been succesful and have learned a lot - despite, and sometimes even thanks to low budgets and "unprofessional" settings (and making some treez-like mistakes that would have been avoidable with money and organization)!

You have to realise not everyone is a brilliant engineer but some get quite far by just stapling & glueing bits and parts of other designs together. The problem is that engineers like these get totally lost when dealing with a complicated problem.

[iwtommo]

Generators are very different to the UK mains supply, and are far less tightly regulated. For example, if you simply remove the load the output voltage will rise significantly until less fuel is fed to the motor.

Thanks, I wonder how high it could have gone?

Quite high - 292v?

 

[fourtytwo42]

Generators are very different to the UK mains supply, and are far less tightly regulated. For example, if you simply remove the load the output voltage will rise significantly until less fuel is fed to the motor.

Thanks, I wonder how high it could have gone?

Quite high - 292v?

 

Thats become like 42, the ultimate answer to the ultimate question that was ? (Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy anyone ?) 

Maybe there is another parralel here, deep thought (the mices computer) only knew the answer, not the question!!

[Jeroen3]

Generators are very different to the UK mains supply, and are far less tightly regulated. For example, if you simply remove the load the output voltage will rise significantly until less fuel is fed to the motor.

Thanks, I wonder how high it could have gone?

>60 Hz >500V (phase-phase) is not rare with a 100-0% load step. Most of the time it's something you can't fix with electronics either, it's just inertia and magnetics.
Caterpillars are famous for this.

[Towger]

Thanks, I wonder how high it could have gone?

Quite high - 292v?

[/quote]

Depends on how crap the generator is :-)

Don't forget these LEDs dimm to save power.  What happens when the sun suddenly comes out from behind a cloud.
 A crap generator with no load...

[stj]

larger generators are actually well regulated,
they dont use the throttle, they use feedback to mess with the magnetic field in the generator with an extra coil.
i'v worked on the big truck-mount ones.

[nali]

Thats become like 42, the ultimate answer to the ultimate question that was ? (Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy anyone ?) 

Maybe there is another parralel here, deep thought (the mices computer) only knew the answer, not the question!!

Wasn't it 6 x 9 ?

[Towger]

i'v worked on the big truck-mount ones.

Some of those are amazing.  There was one powering 100+ houses in my housing estate (subdivision for the yanks) a while back, when the main power lines were being upgraded.   I walked past it and and only realised is was running when I was hit in the face with a blast of hot air from it.  It was whisper quiet. 

I suspect the OP's generator maybe more closely related to a Aldi/Lidl special.