Anyone had a whole-house generator installed?

[CaptainNJ]

i had a 22kw generac whole house automatic installed a year and a half ago. cost ~12,500 plus i think like 500 for the town permit.

power has been down a few times but nothing too long. i think its run like 7 hours in power outages so far. its awesome. power goes out, about 10 seconds later everything is normal again. look out the window and the neighbors are in pitch blackness doing very little but hoping power goes back on. people on the local facebook page are whining about when it will come back and complaining about the power company's maintenance of the lines. i am living life just like any other day.

ive also purchased 2 13 gallon gasoline containers because i ran out of gas during hurricane sandy and it sucked (for my car).

[galaxyhi]

I went through a hurricane, and two major flooding events.

The hurricane was interesting. Only ONE Radio station to come in on a battery radio, the ONLY entertainment while hunkered down with no electricity fir 8 days. Being I lived on a major business route, I was one of the first to get power restored. Moderate temps also helped.
The radio station DJ was blocked In by fallen trees, so he could not get out and no other DJ in. The station was the ONLY one with back up generator. The DJ played news and music fir 3 hours and recorded it, then played the recording while he napped for the next 3 hours, ran for 8 days like that. Probably starved near to death too. He was a lifesaver.
At the time my roommate and I worked as Cooks in a restaurant, and when the 8th day the DJ announced the Burger King near us was serving soda and Whoppers only, my roommate and I looked at each other, and although that kind of crap fast food was not on our radar, we decided a hit Whopper was better than a cold can of ravioli!! Do he said "you fly, I'll buy", and with no traffic lights on anywhere enroute, I navigated the roads to get us there!

Where we lived recently, we had a summer flood in 2005, 2006, 2011. 11 was the worst, the small county seat downtown had 1100 if 1300 properties flooded. We were without power for 7 days. Our best friend decided to buy us a 6500 watt generator, becausexi slept with a CPAP machine and O2 generator, and while we weren't flooded and the O2 supplier could get me emergency tanks, all I had was the O2 tanks to sleep with, each only holding 5.5-6 hours of O2. But, that generator, even with the handle and wheel package is HEAVY. it also require s the oil to be changed every 8 hours of use! The day it took 3 of us to get it set up, we went to take a break in the living room, and while we sat there drinking water for hydration, the fan turned on ( still in the on position) in the living room! Naturally the day we get it, the power comes back on!

Those 3 floods, 5-8 days without power was enough to consider a generator, but the portable model is a pain, plus running extension cord s is a trip Hazzard and a safety/break in issue as a window or door must be open for the cord passthrough.

My FIL had a Nat gas whole house 20kw generac generator installed when my mil went on O2 full time. It's great, but as noted uothread,cwhat if Nat gas is shut off too?

We are trying to consider what to do. We moved to a city lot house 5 years ago when we bought this house. We have been without power only ONCE, when a car struck a nearby power pole, and even then it was only out for an hour. Even when half the east coast was our of powrr our area had power, as it was shifted from PA to this area of the southern tier of NY, so we had power, even when NYC to Ohio was out!

Don't know if it's worth the expense to install a whole house generator. As noted uothread, I think the cheaper 7 kw emergency generator is all that's needed. The stove electronic ignition, the micro, the fridge, the O2 concentrator, the CPAP machine and a light or two is really all that's needed, and all don't always run at same time.

But there's still the portable, we could have a plug added to the box in the basement. My father has one, and uses his portable generator with switching fir only crucial house electric needs: the fridge, well pump, lights, etc. He has I think a 4k or 5k. But he laments it's use, and he's frequently our of power our in the country. In the case of the east coast outage, he had trouble getting gasoline once he ran out. Had to drive down to PA to get gas to run his generator. We have same issue!

No easy answer

4patriots has an inversion generator and solar panels to charge it, but it's expensive! I'm thinking we might get one of those. Or just a solar system with deep cycle batteries. One battery for CPAP,bone or two for fridge, one for lights/tv/radio. That's what I'm looking in to.

Decision s, decision s.

[markjames68]

Originally Posted by galaxyhi

it also require s the oil to be changed every 8 hours of use!

That’s surprising. For all the various generators I’ve owned there was an initial oil change and then every 50-100 hours of use. This includes generators with and without oil filters.

[CaptainNJ]

Originally Posted by galaxyhi

My FIL had a Nat gas whole house 20kw generac generator installed when my mil went on O2 full time. It's great, but as noted uothread,cwhat if Nat gas is shut off too?

its funny when you try to plan for every SHTF scenario and balance that with what is really likely. id rather be self sufficient but hooking up to natural gas makes things way more convenient and its my understanding that natural gas service is rarely lost. i also thought about getting a smaller generator to power needs vs wants but the price difference isnt so much so i figure i may as well have everything. on an ongoing basis, its just more natural gas usage during a power outage. maybe it would save $2k or less on the initial purchase.

[terracore]

We were without power for 5 days and ran a standard 7,000 watt standalone generator about 12 hours per day. It taught us a lot. For one, it was costing about $35/day in gas. This would not have been sustainable for any longer period of time, but that's exactly what these types of generators are made for. Keep reading and see how we got that down to about $2/day for 24 hour power.

We live on a farm and raise/hunt most of our meat. Keeping freezers/refrigeration going is important because we have so much emotional and sweat equity into the contents. But $35/day to preserve that was not an acceptable option so I converted the freezers to run off of solar power. They only need to run when the sun is out so no extra batteries are required to store power to run them at night- the extra energy is stored thermally. The freezers are turned up all the way and during the night the contents might warm to about 8 degrees (-13C) or so before the sun comes out and they run again. The system does have 2 12v golf cart batteries from Costco (almost 100 pounds each) where some of the extra solar power is diverted so the system runs smoothly during periods of clouds and provides us with a short term emergency backup power source at night.

Using a watt meter I determined that the "average" energy consumption in our house is about 600 watts at any one time. That's not a lot. Using a 7000 watt generator sucking down gas is just a silly waste of money. Of course there are times when we might want to run a microwave (1000 watts plus startup surge) or other items, but these are items that only run for a few minutes at a time.

The solution is a 3000 watt (6000 watt surge) pure sine wave inverter hooked to the golf cart batteries and a small 800 watt inverter generator hooked as well. Not only does the generator sip the gas it is almost completely silent. During the day the solar panels provide the power and during the night we can turn on the generator hooked to a battery charger. The small generator keeps up with the "average" electricity consumption and for startup surges and short-term high wattage requirements like well pumps, microwaves, Keurig, etc the batteries provide the short term boost. Batteries drain very little and are quickly recharged by the tiny generator. Saves $33/day in gas, is quiet, and the system was very affordable. IF I ever anticipated long-term supply chain disruptions I could easily add more batteries to make the system gas free but with the cost of batteries that just doesn't make any sense since we have grid power available to us most of the time.

Our system is complicated to explain but can run in any of these configurations:

* 100% grid power
* Solar power by day/ grid power by night
* Solar power by day/ generator at night
* 100% generator (either inverter or standalone)
* Battery power only
* Solar power by day/ vehicle inverter power at night
* 24 hour Vehicle inverter power
* Any combination of above with power from neighbor's extension cord or any other external source

In addition to the above the system is configurable such that only refrigeration is hooked up, or the entire house. We have solar hot water and usually line dry our clothes, so the only 220v appliance is our stove but we have an outdoor kitchenette that uses propane. If we needed to use 220 our only sources are grid and standalone generator.

The best part is the system was low cost and we got immediate returns, our electricity bill has been 30% less since adding the solar component. The solar does generate more electricity than we need during full sun and since we aren't grid tie we have no way to sell that to the power company. Solution: During the summer we use the excess power to run a window air conditioner, in the winter it powers grow lights so the excess power is converted to food.