Questions on Natural Gas Generators

[SecondAmdFirst]

Hi folks, my wife and I were considering having a natural gas generator installed. Does anyone have any experience with these? What kinds of costs are we looking at? Should we be concerned about relying on a utility for a generator? Thanks in advance.

 

[Dirtypacman]

I work with Kohler generators - They are an expensive brand - Quality is top notch. Depending on size of generator starting point for equipment is $3000-5000
You most likely can get away with anywhere from an 8.5 to 12kw - if you are looking to handle most of the house or all or it look at 18kw or higher.
Your only choice for kohler is natural gas or propane and I would go for the natural gas myself.

 

[Finalygotabeltfed]

Hi folks, my wife and I were considering having a natural gas generator installed. Does anyone have any experience with these? What kinds of costs are we looking at? Should we be concerned about relying on a utility for a generator? Thanks in advance.

Worst case scenario...major earthquake, all gas and water lines broken and leaking, power lines down.....you have no power. Still want natural gas?

With diesel, you can store hundreds of gallons(even thousands if you have the space and money) of fuel, stabilized for up to fifteen years. Fuel is on site, less volitile than gasoline, more versitile than natural gas, replentishable, rotateable, useful as heating fuel or motor fuel for vehicles. Could also be sold or bartered if need be.

Just a note: Any shelter designated as a fallout shelter must have its own emergency power supply, comletely independent of outside utilities. Not that your home is a "fallout shelter" but the reasoning behind the requirement is sound. Utilities go down under bad conditions....self containment is key.

Dependence on a utility means you are at the mercy of their abilities to maintain service in a worst case scenario. Personally, that is ultimately when I want to be completely power independent.

Just my 2 cents.......derived from experience in the generator maintainance and retrofit field with a major Boston area company.

 

[BloodyTomFlint]

With diesel, you can store hundreds of gallons(even thousands if you have the space and money) of fuel, stabilized for up to fifteen years. Fuel is on site, less volitile than gasoline, more versitile than natural gas, replentishable, rotateable, useful as heating fuel or motor fuel for vehicles. Could also be sold or bartered if need be.

Would home heating oil be cheaper than diesel? That's what my friend uses when he runs his generator.

 

[Finalygotabeltfed]

Would home heating oil be cheaper than diesel? That's what my friend uses when he runs his generator.

Same stuff.....#2 fuel oil, both work and you buy whatever is cheaper at the time of purchase. I've not seen much of a difference in price lately when I sporatically glance at the signs.

 

[matt]

I work with Kohler generators - They are an expensive brand - Quality is top notch. Depending on size of generator starting point for equipment is $3000-5000
You most likely can get away with anywhere from an 8.5 to 12kw - if you are looking to handle most of the house or all or it look at 18kw or higher.
Your only choice for kohler is natural gas or propane and I would go for the natural gas myself.

18kW or higher? seriously. Even if you have a well pump there is no way you'll need 18kW to run your whole house (unless maybe you are so unfortunate as to have electric heat).

Seriously, I run my whole house on a 6kW peak generator (no well pump). yeah, I can't run all the burners on the stove at once, or the electric clothes dryer, but who cares...

 

[Sprocket]

Commercial buildings and hospitals, etc. are required to be completely self contained - this includes cooling systems and fuel sources.

I've seen gens piped in to city water, city gas and both.

Propane, diesel - whatever - you're only as good as your fuel storage...

 

[Finalygotabeltfed]

Commercial buildings and hospitals, etc. are required to be completely self contained - this includes cooling systems and fuel sources.

I've seen gens piped in to city water, city gas and both.

Propane, diesel - whatever - you're only as good as your fuel storage...

I've seen them too...those were the ones we'd retrofit with standing radiator cooling systems and self contained fuel supplies.

When either the gas mains or water mains break those generators became an expensive door stop.

 

[ShadeWPI]

As a general back-up for occational power outages, a natural gas generator is ideal because the fuel is always available, stored off-site and clean. They also tend to be quieter and more efficient than internal combusion (gasoline or desel) generators. As several people pointed out, this does make you beholden to the utility and in the worst case senerios (total loss of service) ties your power to an outside utility that may not be available.

Unless you have electric heat, you can likely run your whole house on less than 10kW (A lot of houses are built with 100A main circuit breakers that limit the incoming power to 11kW maximum.

I have a 6kW gasoline generator currently. I can run the house on it as long as I am concious of what I'm running (like turning off the rest of the house if I'm going to cook on the stove or use the microwave)

If you use natural gas for heat, look into a natural gas generator, and if you're concerend about the Total Loss of Services senerio, realize that you need an alternate form of heat as well. For that, I would consider a pellet or wood stove and area for storing dry fuel plus a desiel generator and large storage tank

 

[Executive]

Worst case scenario...major earthquake, all gas and water lines broken and leaking, power lines down.....you have no power. Still want natural gas?

With diesel, you can store hundreds of gallons(even thousands if you have the space and money) of fuel, stabilized for up to fifteen years. Fuel is on site, less volitile than gasoline, more versitile than natural gas, replentishable, rotateable, useful as heating fuel or motor fuel for vehicles. Could also be sold or bartered if need be.

Just a note: Any shelter designated as a fallout shelter must have its own emergency power supply, comletely independent of outside utilities. Not that your home is a "fallout shelter" but the reasoning behind the requirement is sound. Utilities go down under bad conditions....self containment is key.

Dependence on a utility means you are at the mercy of their abilities to maintain service in a worst case scenario. Personally, that is ultimately when I want to be completely power independent.

Just my 2 cents.......derived from experience in the generator maintainance and retrofit field with a major Boston area company.

Good advice, but be prepared to defend and protect your fuel cache in a SHTF situation.
Your well lit home and noisy generator will be obvious signs that you have fuel reserves.

Chris

 

[Palladin]

I have a 10kw Briggs & Stratton/CutlerHammer nat gas unit. Fully Automatic. 4 years now, ran great thru the ice storm of Dec 08...sucker eats fuel when you use it for days. The four days on it during the ice storm cost me $185 in nat gas.
I have a 3000sq ft house and it runs everything, sans the 5t ac, dryer, & washer. It could if I shifted a couple of circuits around. I have it setup to run the microwave/wall oven instead.

Cost? I got it wholesale for about $2k..I'm an electrician, my BIL is a plumber, we had it installed in a full day.

 

[dipsy]

I'm by no means an expert, but my decision was based on four things:

* noise (or lack thereof)
* fuel consumption
* fuel choice
* portability

In a true SHTF situation, I'm not concerned with keeping the TiVo, dryer, or much else running. I wanted something that would take whatever fuel I had available, would be extremely quiet, and could come with me should I need to leave. For me, that was a Honda EU2000i modified with a tri-fuel (propane, NG, gasoline) kit. That's not much, but it's super small/quiet and should serve most of my basic needs. I'm have city water, so powering a well wasn't an issue.