I acquired a Briggs & Stratton "Storm Responder" 6250 watts, 8500 starting watts 1850-series 425cc generator. It´s American. I now live in Spain – were 240 volts as normal.
The generator has a couple of 120V outlets – and of interest to me, an outlet labeled 120/240 volts.
I have enough knowledge of wiring to have fully rewired a house in Europe and know the concept of Earth, Neutral and Live. There is a clearly marked earth wire arriving at the 120/240 volt socket – no problems there!
My question: which wires do I combine for the new 3-pin socket in a way that will give me 240V out rather than blow up my generator, me and anything in the area?
DETAILS OF EXISTING SOCKET:
- grey wires feed into pin labeled X
- Red cables feed a pin labeled W
- Blue cables feed the pin labeled Y
- Earth cables feed earth
As an alternative to installing a new 3-pin socket directly on my generator, I could purchase online a 4-pin male to 3-pin female adaptor – but those are described as for welding equipment (square profile pins for live and neutral)…my thought being, to then use a welding type plug to feed the three cables into a regular type couple of European multi-sockets both rated for 16 amps. I only want to power a few things like lights, fridge, computers and other low wattage kit.
Thanks in advance.
Best Answer
This is largely impractical.
Your generator's 240V is 120V-neutral/ground-120V with 240V between the two hot wires, and 120V from each to neutral/ground
Your house power is 240V-Neutral/ground. One hot wire with 240V to neutral/ground.
That's not even getting into the fact that the generator is 60 Hz and the house power is 50 Hz. Which your computers and lights probably won't mind, but your fridge almost certainly will, as it will most likely be spinning 20% faster than designed.
While there are a variety of steps you could attempt to take to rectify these problems, the simple and safer solution is not to attempt modifying this generator.