UK VCF?

Pete Turnbull said: Thanks to Yorkshire Electricity Distribution Ltd. being bloody useless, I am considerably more intimate with my building's generator than I was a few short weeks ago, so this is a subject close to my heart! Anyway, the long and the short is that gennys certainly can produce reliable power - more reliable than YEDL, anyway. Our unit is an Iveco 6l 4-stroke diseasel driving a MarelliMotori genset, generating 150Kva of 440v 3phase. Output voltage and frequency are programmable, and frequency stability calibration is documented in the manual. Modern gennies would be more than capable of doing the job, and should be readily available for short-term lease. You'd be surprised how quiet and clean-running they are as well. Fuel isn't cheap though; IIRC running it at ~75% load it uses something in the order of 200 litres/day of diesel; it should be OK to use red diesel in a genny I think (for non-UKers - red diesel is diesel on which fuel tax hasn't been paid,) but you're still looking at a fair old cost. Oh, and to answer the original question - I'm up noorf in Yorkshire, although I'd actually prefer such an event to be in London. I'd be interested in going if it does happen, anyway. Cheers, Tim. PS. Word of advice - check the fuel controller pump relay. Nothing more annoying than being woken up at 3am because a poxy 5 quid relay has stuck and caused the header tank to run dry. Voice of bitter experience there ;-). (On the bright side, if that does happen I can now show you how to hand-prime a dry diesel engine :^).) -- Tim Walls at home in Leeds EMail & MSN: tim.walls at snowgoons.com