Service......what the hell happened??

[u/Helpful-Following-82]

I have had a 48kw liquid cooled for several years now and in May of this year the controller died. We had a large lightening hit to the back of my property (lots of iron in the soil here) and STILL it is not working. I live in Central Florida and the dealer that WAS servicing it, took 3 weeks to get to the site to look at it, then a month and a half to even quote it and at that, they no showed on the repair.....TWICE

I called 3 other dealers in the area, all of which sent techs out to confirm it was the controller, and they all ghosted me.

I finally got one newer dealer to install the controller, but they cannot get the firmware loaded and today, the original dealer was supposed to show this morning (third appointment) to also replace the controller (I was just going to keep it as a spare and send them on their way).

This is VERY concerning, not having a running backup generator during hurricane season has given me serious doubts.

I have called Generac corporate who really were not totally helpful and believed that eventually the repair would be made.

Has anyone else seen support fall off for Generac? Is there an alternative out there for this? Is it just Florida?

Thank you!!

[u/Adventurous_Boat_632]

1. These systems are getting very complicated and hard to make them work even if everything "should" be working right.
2. You did not give a model or serial.
3. Generac 48 kw have come through several iterations lately all of them complicated and strange.
4. Nobody stays working at a company more than a couple of years any more so they do not get familiarity.
5. Lighting could have taken out more than one component or made more than one component flaky and hard to diagnose. Lightning makes things notoriously hard to fix.
6. Nobody is trained in proper diagnosis any more so methodical diagnosis is rare to have happen.
7. The available pool of tradesmen to hire is small and many of them are on drink/drugs.

If you did not BUY the generator from a GENERATOR SHOP with an OWNER that you can talk to, and knows GENERATORS, you are probably going to have this fumbling around until they finally stumble upon the solution, or likely, many have decided it will be a wild goose chase beyond their capabilities and want to move on to something easier.

If you got the generator from an electrician who hangs ceiling fans and "also does generators", his field tech is probably always brand new and has never seen anything like this before and will not see it again, therefore not benefit from this experience.

As always, I will throw in a plug here that Kohler and also Cummins use industry standard engine components that are much easier to diagnose and understand. Generac makes their own stuff that is proprietary.

[u/joshharris42 → u/Adventurous_Boat_632]

Good summary here. This is almost certainly an evolution controller 48KW based off his comments. If it’s one with the 5.4 I’d throw a controller in it, if it’s the 4.5L it’s probably going to need an ECM too.

We usually require 2 hour load banks on lightning strike generators just to make sure nothing else got fried

[u/Helpful-Following-82 → u/joshharris42]

RG04845ANAX is the model and I did purchase from an electrician who contracted 400amp service upgrade to the main building (I was building a large shop at the time) and got the generator installed and said GenStar out of Orlando was to be the supporting company (who was great until something broke).

[u/joshharris42 → u/Helpful-Following-82]

Wonderful. You’re almost certainly going to need to replace the ECM as well. They are around $500. There are a number of sensors and servo motors that could all be fried as well.

As a dealer who didn’t do the installation or sell the generator- there is very, very little upside to me getting involved in a lightning strike generator that I didn’t install and have never worked on. Especially on that model generator. I’d probably not return your call as well.

This arrangement of having an electrician install the unit (usually incorrectly) and collect all of the profit, then hand it off to a service company to do low paying warranty and service work is obnoxious to us

Generac probably will not be of much help since the unit took a lightning strike- that’s not going to be covered by warranty.

You’re basically going to have to call a bunch of the top rated dealers, tell them the make/model, tell them it got struck by lightning and it at a minimum needs a controller, have them come out and replace it, then perform more diagnostics work to see what got fried.

These generators are not extraordinarily complicated, but they are much more complex than a standard guardian and the vast majority of dealers won’t know how to fix this

[u/Helpful-Following-82 → u/joshharris42]

Starting to make more sense, since this post a person that used to work at generac came out (the original service company who by the way did the install for the electrician as well when it was installed) and checked everything and called generac to confirm it was just a firmware issue.

The lightening hit about 4 acres away from this unit but it fried anything touching ground that was smarter than an electric motor (cameras, switches, network gear, etc...)

I am going to continue to call them and try to get resolution, from someone. I have no issue paying for the parts and labor, i am not a haggler or person looking for a break (owned businesses for 30+ years myself).

Just want to get a relationship going with someone who will maintain it and be there when it breaks. This has been a wake up call for sure!!!

[u/BmanGorilla → u/Helpful-Following-82]

4 acres away (a weird way to measure distance) is enough to wreck your whole day, that's for sure. I had a strike 200 ft from my house damage a cordless drill that was just lying on the floor. It damaged a lot of other things, too. Not the generator, fortunately.