Or, if you heat with oil, you could get a diesel generator.
...except that diesel generators start at about $10K.
I finally got to burn in our genset last month after a huge windstorm knocked us out for about 42 hours. It was kind of warm and I was mostly concerned about food going bad. I have a transfer switch that lets me dump the whole house on the generator and run anything I want, within reason. We ran a 2 ton heat pump, a big chest freezer, 22cf refrigerator, all the CFLs I could turn on, 3 computers and network equipment (DSL stays up in a power failure, BTW) and had enough for intermittent loads like the sump pump without worrying about anything tripping. We ran for about 16 hrs/day for 2 days and my gas bill went up about 30 therms over our usual gas consumption for the month. It works out to about $1.50 an hour, not bad for having the AC on! I’ve found that it takes a lot of gas just to spin it over, so if you are going to run it, you might as well run it hard.
Just to see what it would do, I turned on the 4500 watt hot tub heater along with AC and was able to pull the generator down to 50 HZ at wide open throttle with just electrical draw. It ran this way for about 5 minutes and nothing tripped. I was also able to start the 3 HP log splitter without a problem and it has a 60 amp inrush. We have gas hot water and range, so they are no issue, but my parents are all electric and report no problems. You have to be careful when the water heater is on, but the surface elements on a cooktop are only about 1800 or 2400 watts each and aren’t a big deal when you have 8500 watts available.
We both have Kohler 8.5 RMY generators that were superceded by the RES generators, but same specs; just more bells and whistles. My father reports that his burns about a gallon of LP an hour, which is cheap if you consider the consequences of frozen pipes, bad food or a motel stay. They have lost power for 9 days at a time and it isn’t unusual to be out 2-4 days. We used to have to worry about keeping large quantities of gasoline around, but now a 120 gal tank will hold him long enough to ride out most problems and call in a delivery. I woulda gotten a bigger tank, but…
These things are really commercial duty units and the 8.5 kw actually has a 12 kw head on it with a smaller engine. It has an electronic governor and voltage regulation on it that is top notch and should be almost impossible to burn out. I think these list at $3600, but I’ve seen them online for under $3000. It’s definitely overkill for me in the ‘burbs, but out in the boonies, this thing could literally be a lifesaver. I don’t sell them, but I know a few people that have them and all are happy they spent the big bucks. The automatic transfer switch is a luxury, but if you travel and leave the house unattended, or have someone sick or elderly at home, you can be pretty sure you aren’t going to lose power for more than about 30 seconds. They have a 5 year warranty on them now, so they must be pretty good, then.
BTW, I’ve noticed that whenever they talk about how many houses can run on a megawatt, it works out to about 10 kw per house. Obviously, you can get by on a lot less, but just make sure you can start your well pump, or you might as well not have it, IMHO.
I’d say invest in a battery back up system - really just a bank of marine batteries and an inverter. You can get a 220V inverter for 110 bucks plus shipping. Back wire into your panel through a breaker, and run your critical elements off the batteries when the power goes out.
If you set up with a lap top, LED lights in choice spots, and so on, then you should be able to run enough off of a sizable battery bank for a long stretch.
Advantages:
1. No gas/diesel.
2. Can be switched on easily, inside home (throw main breaker OFF first, of course, or get a subpanel like you would for a generator).
3. Charge easily with cheap battery charger.
4. Long life (10-20 years or more).
5. Will be usable when gas/diesel are not available.
6. No noise.
7. No hard starting/maintenance.
Of course, if you want to run your house like with the line voltage on, then this isn’t for you.
If you want a relatively cheap, quick, easy way to keep critical components on, then this is it.
I’m biased, of course, as I expect diesel/gas shortages within about 3 years, but I expect the electric to stay on for at least another 10, fully, and 5-20 more thereafter rolling.
Another benefit is that, if you ever add solar panels, you have the batteries already.
Or, if you heat with oil, you could get a diesel generator.
...except that diesel generators start at about $10K.
Not true.
I got mine, delivered, for about 1,300$.
That was 2 years ago.
It’s 6,000 watts, as I recall, and a Chinese make. Battery and pull start, and, being a diesel, it will run forever in theory, but, of course, you’ll need diesel.
Hog, what are you going to power with 18-20kw? The average house runs fine on less than 7kw, especially in the winter. And with the dual furnace stoves you’ll be running, the only thing you’ll need to be powering is the refer running overtime.
True, but the ones I am looking at are set up by the circuits they can hold. A 16 will hold 16 circuits. slightly less with central AC and a couple other electric guzzlers.
I want to truly run as much of the “whole” house as possible. Plus I have a sub panel in the garage for the addition. Not sure if that would be able to be tied into the transfer panel or not.
Between the sub panel & main breaker panel, I have prolly well over 18 circuits. but lighting and low power users shouldn’t be a big problem.
Want to handle prolly 2 or 3 larger ductless A/C units (down the road), the well, electric oven, etc. I’ll talk with a few electricians prior to purchasing.
The other fact I like is the larger units are water cooled. WHich from what I have been reading, have fewer problems than the air cooled.
Take a look at a Kohler 8.5KW. When the power is out it is not wise to run everything like nothing happened, that is unless your uncle just passed a gas well onto you.
But why do you want a generator. For those kind of bucks you should be able to run a big honking extension cord to that glowing nuke down the road a piece.
Last night we went to Lowe’s and priced an automatic Centurion gen...it’s 7k if run on LP and 6k for NG. With taxes the cost was $2010 all we have to do is pay for the installation. Now our handyman Joe said he could get one and install with everything we needed for less than 2500. imo that’s a reasonable since a couple of 3 times over the years we’ve been without power for more than a week. And since national grid took over the net here the usual 3 hour pole down delay has become an 8hr ordeal. The selling point for me is that we have a huge LP storage tank so now I don’t have to run around hustling for fuel. I keep 10gallons handy for all the gas engines now and I think it’s to much to store...it doesn’t have time to go bad more or less a safety thing…
...but if 2k is too much too spend they had a lot of nice brand name gens up there for a third of the Centurions price.
Just to chime in one more time, a portable generator is portable, so you can use it for a project somewhere you want to power something electric. So, it will do double duty.
Hog, what are you going to power with 18-20kw? The average house runs fine on less than 7kw, especially in the winter. And with the dual furnace stoves you’ll be running, the only thing you’ll need to be powering is the refer running overtime.
True, but the ones I am looking at are set up by the circuits they can hold. A 16 will hold 16 circuits. slightly less with central AC and a couple other electric guzzlers.
I want to truly run as much of the “whole” house as possible. Plus I have a sub panel in the garage for the addition. Not sure if that would be able to be tied into the transfer panel or not.
Between the sub panel & main breaker panel, I have prolly well over 18 circuits. but lighting and low power users shouldn’t be a big problem.
Want to handle prolly 2 or 3 larger ductless A/C units (down the road), the well, electric oven, etc. I’ll talk with a few electricians prior to purchasing.
The other fact I like is the larger units are water cooled. WHich from what I have been reading, have fewer problems than the air cooled.
2 years ago when I was looking at a generator for the mill I ran across a place on ebay that had rebuilt Detroit 2-71 generators at 18KW for around $4500. This engine is well know to be indestructable,very fuel efficient and run for 20,000+ hours without any problems. I’ll see if I can find the seller again.
I ended up buying mine from Diesel Service and Supply out of Colorado. The shipping to NY was rediculous but I saved a ton of money buying it there compared to a dealer around here.
This thing is massive . Weighs in at around 8-9000 lbs.
At 250 KW I could probably power half the town I live in. LOL
Last night we went to Lowe’s and priced an automatic Centurion gen...it’s 7k if run on LP and 6k for NG. With taxes the cost was $2010 all we have to do is pay for the installation....
I have been thinking about just this setup.
I live in a somewhat remote area, on top of a huge hill, and we just lost power for 4 dasy this spring. we made do with an old portable gas unit, but if it happennend in teh middle of winter I wouldn;t liek it. It was a 5K unit- and like some other sit would not power our 500 ft well pump very well at all… spotty at best.
Kepp us informed as to your progress and likes/dislikes…
Savage, that Centurion unit (Generac) is built to meet a price point for the big box stores. It really is nothing more than a portable generator in a metal box with a cheap transfer switch thrown in. The engine is made by Generac and not well regarded in the small engine biz. Do me a favor and look at the Kohler; it’s a world apart in quality. It’s probably double the price but 10 times the machine. If it is really too much, buy a Honda portable and make do. Those little Generacs aren’t worth the money.
Hog, don’t overbuy on the generator. For what it sounds like you want to do, the 12 is probably more than enough. It will start 4 tons of AC at once and probably 3 smaller units started individually. I can run a 2 and a 2-1/2 ton heat pump on my 7KW. The bigger generator is going to suck up a lot of fuel just to spin over.
Thanks for the heads up Redox...and I had 2 electricians tell me they were the cats meow too.
You seem well versed on gens can you recommend another LP gen system...or is the Kohler one, if it is that’s what I’m buying. Like I said the gas rep warned me about not getting a 12k cause we don’t need it and the smaller one that met our needs would run longer in a real emergency...and that’s why I want to stay with LP.
8.5 KW should be big enough for most people, unless you have unusually large motors to start, or a lot of electric resistance you need to run. Since most of us have woodstoves, this is probably not the case. I have an older 8.5 RMY running on NG. It is pretty much the same engine/generator as the RES, but includes the battery charger and a newer version of electronics that has diagnostics. If you check the spec page, it shows that the 8.5 is capable of 23 kVa of motor starting and 100% load acceptance, which means that you can drop the entire 8500 watts on the generator at once and it will take it. 23 kVa works out to about 96 amps of power. I can tell you that mine barely grunts when I start the new log splitter (3 HP and 60 Amps of inrush). I have overloaded it to 9500 watts on LP and it stays in tolerance for voltage and HZ. An electric water heater will tax it a bit, but still leave you 50% for everything else. This is one beefy generator!
I used to work in the HVAC department of a company that was a distributor for Kohler. I befriended a couple of their mechanics and got to hear some of their war stories. Generac made their fortune on building portable generators for other manufacturers and has branched out into the commercial field, but is a relatively small player there. The only other major manufacturer out there building anything this size is Onan/Cummins. Both Onan and Kohler have marine and RV divisions, while Generac does not. Onan shows a residential genset on their website, but for some reason, I can’t get any info on it. Their RV gensets are supposed to be pretty good, but I have no experience.
I do have a big deep cycle battery that I use with an inverter when I want to put the house on “silent run” and the entertainment center and all the computers are on UPS. Almost makes me wish the power went out more so I could exercise everything more…
I have to say, the Honda EU3000 and EU6500 generators are some of the nicest portable generators I have seen. Great power. Inverter type. Whisper quiet. VERY fuel efficient. Kohler also makes a good unit.
