Back up genny set

[stoughtonfarmboy]

View attachment 121173

Local (?) name for this size propane tank. 200 or 250 gallons, not sure.

I worked for a propane dealer 50 years ago. A similar 250 gallon tank that was horizontal, same as a 500 or 1,000 gallon tanks. The 250 gallon tanks looked like a pig. Term was used for the upright as you show as well.

Ken

 

[300jk]

Isn't 1000k a million? 1k=1000 100k = 100,000 1000k=1,000,000

My fault. Typo

 

[buickanddeere]

While a majority of the time, a generator that is borderline in capacity or too small for the application is chosen to save a few $$$. There is such a thing as installing too large of a generator . Particularly air cooled units that are operating in the wintertime .At below ideal combustion chamber wall temperatures.

 

[Tony in SD]

I have had a 25Kw PTO generator since 2009. It works well for the whole farm. But as I get older I am seriously considering an LPV automatic gen set. Mostly for convinence but somewhat incase my mobility does not allow me to get out in the bad weather anymore.
While I have used it, the power at my farm is rarely out very long. Might have something to do with the Line Superintendent living just down the road from me on the same 3 phase line. LOL

 

[Richard Nixon]

Finally after 10 months of repair and clean up from Helene, things are pretty much back to normal at my home, and the Maine state flag is folded up and in the building. Now, on to preventative/safety measures. Helene was a once in a lifetime hurricane for my area of SC. Ive had people in their 90s tell me there has never been an event like this. Heck we dont see tornados that often. The last one I actually saw was back in the late 70s. After being without power for 7 days, and having health conditons, I have decided that I will be getting a a generator of some sort to power the house "just in case". Now, Im not asking what brand, or how big, and dont want to start any wars over which unit is better and which is junk. I am simply looking for ideas. For those of you with back ups, what type of set up do you use, and why?

Natural gas lines were brought into my place in NW New Jersey so I just had a NG powered 26KW generator installed. Finished installation yesterday, 1 December, 2025. Last night at about 8 O'clock our power went off. I have no idea why as the big winter storm won't start until today. The house went black for about 10 +/- seconds and the generator came on and everything was back to normal. We had a good laugh about it as it was the first power failure of this season. There are some things I do not fully understand about it yet but I should have time to read up on it today as we are in for snow, heavy snow and then freezing rain for the whole day. One thing is that because of the possible electric load imposed by the house there will be load shedding. We selected the kitchen electric range and the electric clothes dryer as appliances to be shed. When this power failure occurred last night I went to the electric range and turned a burner on and it worked fine. My guess is that the load has to reach a certain point before shedding occurs??

 

[Jim.ME]

Natural gas lines were brought into my place in NW New Jersey so I just had a NG powered 26KW generator installed. Finished installation yesterday, 1 December, 2025. Last night at about 8 O'clock our power went off. I have no idea why as the big winter storm won't start until today. The house went black for about 10 +/- seconds and the generator came on and everything was back to normal. We had a good laugh about it as it was the first power failure of this season. There are some things I do not fully understand about it yet but I should have time to read up on it today as we are in for snow, heavy snow and then freezing rain for the whole day. One thing is that because of the possible electric load imposed by the house there will be load shedding. We selected the kitchen electric range and the electric clothes dryer as appliances to be shed. When this power failure occurred last night I went to the electric range and turned a burner on and it worked fine. My guess is that the load has to reach a certain point before shedding occurs??

Do you have electric heat or is NG your heat source? Without knowing the total load of your house, I will say I doubt you will need to shed anything using a 26KW generator. Your NG genset should be capable of close to 100 amps of 240-volt power.

 

[TheBartman47]

Rule of thumb is to not exceed 80% of the generators rated load capacity.

 

[buickanddeere]

Rule of thumb is to not exceed 80% of the generators rated load capacity.

Continuous loading , momentary full loads and intermittent peaks are all different applications .Fully agree that for continuous loading of consumer grade products is 80% of nameplate current . Is about all they are built for .

 

[Richard Nixon]

Do you have electric heat or is NG your heat source? Without knowing the total load of your house, I will say I doubt you will need to shed anything using a 26KW generator. Your NG genset should be capable of close to 100 amps of 240-volt power.

I didn't get into that to keep it brief. Our home is 58 years old, built to my specs as a total electric home, which wasn't a bad idea back then. Walls full of insulation, attic, etc., and baseboard electric heat. So that all had to be considered in determining the size of generator required. BUT! This past summer I had a split system air conditioning with heat pump installed and what came along with that was a natural gas furnace that now heats our entire house. We have no electric baseboard heat on whatsoever. None. But it still was included in a worst case scenario so we had to go with the 26KW generator. Even with the 26KW generator we had to decide which appliances we could do without. Again, that worst case scenario. We chose the electric range and the electric clothes dryer. My understanding was that these 2 appliances would be dropped as soon as the generator came on. But, in our power failure last evening, about 2 hours after final installation of the gen, the electric range worked fine with only the generator giving us power. So my guess is that the load has to get up to that peak, which it never will because of the way we're using it, for those 2 loads to be shed. More experience will be a good teacher and it looks like we're going to have ice coming down on us for the next few hours so we'll probably have a power failure. Trees have been spreading out over the years plus the ash trees all died so the tree trimming crews have been kept busy all year long but there always seems to be more.

 

[Dopp Creek]

I have an electric start Champion 9000W unit 75 ft from the house in a lean-to. It is a dual fuel unit and I run it on propane. Our power has gone out over 15 times in the past three years; anywhere from a couple hours to four days depending on what happened. After starting, I have to plug in the cord and flip the interlock switch in my garage panel. I took lots of photos of each step of the process and added them to written instructions so my wife can energize the system if I am away. The instructions were then laminated and hang on a hook with a flashlight at the electric panel. The photos and words gave her the confidence she needed to work it without me.

 

[Scott 730]

Our power has gone out over 15 times in the past three years; anywhere from a couple hours to four days depending on what happened.

Where is this place that the power goes out that often?

 

[SleepyFarmall]

I have a 10k portable made by Rigid. Not ideal but it was a lot cheaper. I can roll it away when not using it. I've got bout $1500 in it including the house hookup. Michael

 

[Dopp Creek]

Where is this place that the power goes out that often?

NW Oregon. My son (who works for the power company) said that we are at the tail end (last 1/2 mile) of a distribution line. That line runs through some heavily forested areas and limbs or trees frequently make contact with the line. When I complained about the disruptions the utility told me they were behind on their trimming work. The four day outage was a precautionary shutdown during a forest fire about three miles from our home. Whatever the cause, we decided to be prepared.