At 12:23 AM 12/8/2005, Vasile Surducan wrote: >If you'll pray, He will answer you the same as me: >- I can help you if you'll help yourself. > >There is a cheap alternative you didn't mention it: >- use a feroresonant stabiliser after your mains generator. Is able to >stabilise from 180 to 240V (european style) at up to 5KW. You should >found such stabiliser on any second hand rubish store. I was going to suggest exactly the same thing until I read the message about the poor frequency stability. Those ferroresonant stabilizers do not work properly away from the resonant frequency. I think the cheap UPS is by far the best solution, especially if it can be operated from the nominal 12Vdc output of the alternator. Or: dig into a discarded UPS or battery-to-AC-mains invertor and rip out the dc-dc convertor portion. Then take the raw high voltage from the alternator (I was going to say: 120Vac 'til I remembered that Russell probably lives in 230 Vac country), rectify and filter it, then use that to power the output bridge of the UPS. We can purchase cheapie 300VA inverters here (Canada) for about $30 on sale at the local Canadian Tire store. Regular (not sale price) is about double that. The inverter section is somewhat marginal if operated at full output for an extended period of time but the output bridge section seems to be robust. dwayne -- Dwayne Reid Trinity Electronics Systems Ltd Edmonton, AB, CANADA (780) 489-3199 voice (780) 487-6397 fax Celebrating 21 years of Engineering Innovation (1984 - 2005) .-. .-. .-. .-. .-. .-. .-. .-. .-. .- `-' `-' `-' `-' `-' `-' `-' `-' `-' Do NOT send unsolicited commercial email to this email address. This message neither grants consent to receive unsolicited commercial email nor is intended to solicit commercial email. -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist