Perhaps you have heard of stress testing, the procedure doctors use to determine a heart rate and level of fitness when subjected to very strenuous exercise over a period of time. You might have even gone through a few stress tests at your yearly physicals. If so, then you know that a stress test asks a lot of your heart – much more than most people ever ask of their cardiovascular system during a year. Your doctor wants to know how much your heart can take. Similarly, standby generators can undergo a similar stress test. This is known as a load bank test.
When the power goes out, you want to be sure that your generator can handle the electrical load that you ask of it. Perhaps your generator is rated for 22kw, but all you ever ask of it is 14 kw in an emergency power-need situation. But what if you need all 22kw, can and will your generator deliver that power on demand? If you have never asked for that much before, how do you know it is ready and able to do its job to that level?
The answer is to have a load bank test done once a year to determine if, in fact, your generator can perform to the electrical load it was designed to do. It is usually scheduled during normal preventative maintenance. A load bank is brought to your generator by our service technicians and hooked up to your generator. Simply stated, the load bank asks the generator to provide a consistent level of electricity to the maximum of its capacity safely. The generator either passes or not, and if not, a correction can be made to its frequency and voltage. This is a specialized service and is recommended for best performance from your generator.
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