Auragen G5000 engine mounted generator discussion, questions..

[maxjmclaughlin]

Just picked up a 2001 e350 v10, 68k Miles, was an old radio station van, this will be my first build and I'm pumped!

It came equipped with the AuraGen G5000 engine mounted generator. It's produces 5000kW standby, 7.2kW at peak. Unfortunately it seems that the electronic control unit (ECU) that is part of the system did not come with vehicle....

Personally I know nothing about this kind of generator or what might go into rewiring/finding a new ECU, connecting this to a possible house battery setup, if it is even a good route to go for house battery setup, etc.

Would love any insight that anyone can provide, I can send pictures etc if anyone is interested.. It seems like I've got a potentially pretty valuable and useful piece of equipment in this Auragen that's already mounted to my engine, now I just need to figure out how to get it up and running!!!

 

[dwh]

On a camper van, there is nothing that will require 5kw, except air conditioning and/or microwave. And even both of those together at the same time would only draw half of 5kw.

Also, if you are running the truck's main engine to generate electricity for a/c, you are already driving an a/c compressor - so why bother driving a big electric generator as well?


Running the truck's main engine to drive a generator that can produce massive power that you can't use anyway is a huge waste.

I'd sell it to someone who actually needs that kind of power (mobile welding shop) and if I had to run a/c I'd buy a small generator like a Honda.

 

[maxjmclaughlin]

I see where you're coming from for sure....this camper van will become a full time living space when it's completed....my needs would be running a refrigerator (24/7), heating unit in winter months (lets say around 8hours/day), lighting, outlets for various small electronics operations sporadically (phone, laptop, coffee pot, etc), water pump for a sink, water heater (possibly?) I'm not concerned about an a/c unit beyond what's already installed with vehicle, and I may be missing some things but that's the bulk of it as of now.

I guess a further question would be if the system is already in place and doesn't actually have much of an effect on the engine operation (which again I could be wrong here but according to Auragen website the generator doesn't have a negative effect on engine power or fuel efficiency, it doesn't require maintenance, etc) would it be possible to use it to charge house batteries as I drive and generator turns that could provide for my living quarters?

I definitely understand that I don't want to idle my engine every time I want to turn a light on or keep my refrigerator going, I guess I'm just wondering if this high power output could be utilized in small doses of driving to store large amounts of energy in a battery bank that would accommodate my living needs ?

If I can only use this output while the engine idles then I'll forget about it and sell it. My original plan was to use solar to charge house batteries, this van just so happened to have this unique unit which made me wonder.

 

[dwh]

You sure are not going to run electric heating for eight hours a night. And even if you did run your main engine for eight hours a night to power an electric heater, you'd get a lot more BTUs of heat from the the heater core anyway.

Battery charging takes hours. Like 6-12 hours (minimum), depending. If you are already driving, then sure, get some power from the main engine since it's running anyway. But are you going to idle the main engine for that many hours just to charge batteries? Small generator would work better and use less fuel.

Don't think that giant AuraGen alternator doesn't affect the engine. It takes horsepower to drive that alternator and horsepower consumes fuel.

Lead-acid batteries will only accept a certain amount of amps. Doesnt matter if you have a million amp alternator, if the batteries are only allowing 30a to flow. A standard 100a alternator (@14v would be 1400w or 1.4kw), will generally be able to supply whatever a small battery bank can handle. You would need more batteries than your truck can carry to be able to accept a 5kw charge.


Heating: propane, gasoline or diesel. (No one uses electric/battery for that, except maybe an electric blanket.)

Water heating: same as above.

Stove: same as above. (Though usually propane or diesel for indoors. Coleman dual fuel can use gasoline, but that's only for outdoors.) (A few with massive battery banks do have electric stoves.)

Fridge: propane or battery. (And forget chreapo dorm fridges, they draw a lot more power than an RV type electric fridge. (Although, running an RV type propane fridge off a battery will suck even more power than a dorm fridge.))

Microwave, coffee pot etc.: Inverter powered from battery. (Not terribly efficient, but tolerable for a few minutes here and there.)


With a decent size battery bank you can get by - but only by using other sources of energy (like propane) for things like heating.

Charging that battery bank will take hours, so driving supplemented by solar and if need be a small generator is how it's done.

No one spends the fuel to run a truck engine just to charge batteries if they can avoid it - unless the battery bank is massive enough to make it worth it.

 

[maxjmclaughlin]

Definitely appreciate your insight dwh...this is exactly what I was looking to discover, whether this whole Auragen was worth me wrestling with or not, and it is sounding like it's not....so I guess now on to figuring out what the thing is worth and who would even buy it....

Sounds like propane/gas options for stove, heat, water heat are what I'll need to search for. Was kind of leaning that way. And I was thinking rv high efficiency electric fridge option for sure.

As far as solar goes you mentioned a battery bank charged while driving and supplemented by solar, is that done through hooking up engine alternator to house battery bank along with engine battery, or a separate smaller alternator connected to house battery bank that is also connected to solar setup? Sorry bear with me I'm very fresh into this whole thing...And the electrical system is what I fear most of getting into this whole thing ha

 

[dwh]

Mostly it's done by tying the house battery and engine batteries together while the engine is running so they both charge off the single alternator.

A couple common ways of doing that. Search the forum for "$50 isolator" and also "bluesea acr" and you'll find more than you ever wanted to know.

Some run dual alternators, but usually they just run the alternators together to double the amps instead of having one alternator for engine battery and one for house battery (but a few do do it that way).

Another way is a DC-DC charger that takes power from the alternator/engine battery and bumps up the voltage to do a proper charge on the house battery. Pretty much have to use that if your truck's voltage regulator is set to less than 14v.

Solar is easy - solar panel to charge controller to house battery and it's "set it and forget it" after that.

Campervan doesn't really need anything special.

 

[Bbasso]

I am running my full interior from solar power, including: Engel mt45, 26in TV, Espar D4, lights, fantastic fan, laptop and many other electric devices. I can charge from the dual alternators also.
My system is 100% reliable and quiet, my house batteries can go for 5 days before they drop to 75%
My oven and stove is propane.
I purposely didn't want a generator due to a few reasons, main one was noise.

The price of your generator would probably offset the cost of solar significantly.

Just my .02.......

 

[Eaglefreek]

We have at least 2 Auragens on a couple of our company trucks. We also have one Raven Blackbird which is similar. As far as I know, Auragen is out of business or at least no longer makes engine mounted generators. Raven, also doesn't offer the engine mounted generators anymore. I don't have much knowledge on the Auragen since the truck in our office has the Raven. I can possibly put you in touch with the electrical engineer who sets up our trucks. He has a lot of knowledge on the Auragen. With the newer trucks, besides not having any engine driven options, there isn't much room left for the generator so our company has been experimenting with mounting a genertor to the front bumper. We originally had a air cooled Yamar mounted to a Dodge 3500, but we are currently in the process of installing a watercooled Kubota powered genset.

 

[maxjmclaughlin]

Eaglefreek, if at all possible to get his email from you that'd be great, at this point though I'm more interested in selling the setup and maybe going with something a little more appropriate for my campervan needs, solar possibly dual alternator. It seems this Auragen is a little too large and high output for my setup..

 

[maxjmclaughlin]

I am running my full interior from solar power, including: Engel mt45, 26in TV, Espar D4, lights, fantastic fan, laptop and many other electric devices. I can charge from the dual alternators also.
My system is 100% reliable and quiet, my house batteries can go for 5 days before they drop to 75%
My oven and stove is propane.
I purposely didn't want a generator due to a few reasons, main one was noise.

The price of your generator would probably offset the cost of solar significantly.

Just my .02.......

Seems like exactly the setup I need to work towards Rob! And you're saying that the sale value of the generator system could probably pay for the solar setup??! That'd be excellent haha, I'm thinking of a dual alternator setup like you've got to assist with charging, I wonder if I could just rig up the second alternator on the existing mounts for this big ole generator in there, certainly there'd be enough room...And it'd have it's own drive belt...

 

[Bbasso]

I should have said maybe pay for part of the solar system... Sorry.
I don't know how much you can get for that generator. Start searching to see what's it worth.

As for the dual alternators, my 7.3 has it already, some do, some don't. Adding the second alternators isn't exactly cheap and does take a little labor but I'm alao not sure if the 6.8 in the E350 ever had that option.

A big quality single alternator can do the job too, no need to get complicated LOL

To get a good working solar system takes math, money and research.

 

[maxjmclaughlin]

I should have said maybe pay for part of the solar system... Sorry.
I don't know how much you can get for that generator. Start searching to see what's it worth.

As for the dual alternators, my 7.3 has it already, some do, some don't. Adding the second alternators isn't exactly cheap and does take a little labor but I'm alao not sure if the 6.8 in the E350 ever had that option.

A big quality single alternator can do the job too, no need to get complicated LOL

To get a good working solar system takes math, money and research.

Gotcha, yeah appears the generator system ive got MSRP is around $3.5k. Granted this is a used system, but I'd hope to at least get 1.5k-2k for it...i dont know, maybe that's a stretch, will have to post it up for sale and see i suppose hah. I've been reading up on the alternator debates of a dual system/single bigger quality ones/etc. Seems like there are alot of options and definitely some work that goes into each one in their own regard. Whats a ballpark on the solar setup you've got, because seems id want something similar for my build?

 

[Bbasso]

Just over $1k including the two houses batteries, those were the biggest expense.

 

[Eaglefreek]

I'll shoot our electrical engineer an email on Monday. In my opinion, if you don't have the control box, it's not going to be worth very much because it's only good for a spare for someone who already has the system and there is no way to know if it is still functional. We just replaced the Raven in ours. They stopped making them years ago and I'm told they were about $5k new. My boss got lucky and found a company who bought a system in 08 and never used it. My boss paid $800 for it.

 

[maxjmclaughlin]

I'll shoot our electrical engineer an email on Monday. In my opinion, if you don't have the control box, it's not going to be worth very much because it's only good for a spare for someone who already has the system and there is no way to know if it is still functional. We just replaced the Raven in ours. They stopped making them years ago and I'm told they were about $5k new. My boss got lucky and found a company who bought a system in 08 and never used it. My boss paid $800 for it.

I did manage to track down the electronic control unit from the person I bought it from, so I will have the complete setup if that'll help me out for selling....