My Ice storm/ generator lessons

[woodlandfarms]

And then you could go the way we will on our new house Forget the generator.....

Elon Musk: Tesla home battery orders are "off the hook" - May. 6, 2015

 

[dragoneggs]

And then you could go the way we will on our new house Forget the generator.....

Elon Musk: Tesla home battery orders are "off the hook" - May. 6, 2015

Are you planning to augment with solar panels?

 

[4570Man]

And then you could go the way we will on our new house Forget the generator..... Elon Musk: Tesla home battery orders are "off the hook" - May. 6, 2015

What if the power is out for more than a day or two. You are still going to need something to recharge the batteries.

 

[woodlandfarms]

Seabeck, not sure what it is like further north but here Solar is only good for the summer from what I understand of the current solar panels (I could be wrong, would love to use solar and be off the grid completely).

4570 - I am not a prepper and in our area, we are finding power to be down about 24 hours worse case (we just had a massive windstorm and were without power for 12 hours). Most of the lines are getting buried around here. I am also not a prepper. I figure at this point I am too old and too fat to be much more than a zombie lunch. We will always have a generator around the farm, so after the batteries crap out we will go to gas if necessary. I would assume knowing my wife, that we will be in a hotel or shacked up with friends who have power by the time the generator is needed.

 

[dragoneggs]

I would love to have some solar but the ROI makes it very hard to justify in this area and for my needs. Took a solar energy engineering class long ago. At that time is definitely cost prohibitive. While solar technology has improved immensely during my lifetime, the cost is still too high for me. I type this while staring at another cloudy day and it looks like snow is coming. :cool2:

 

[3930dave]

Seabeck, not sure what it is like further north but here Solar is only good for the summer from what I understand of the current solar panels (I could be wrong, would love to use solar and be off the grid completely)

I'll apologize to OP, post a few brief comments and a link, then quit drifting the thread ......

Typically solar panels do better in the cold (less internal losses), and while you still obviously need sun, with snow on the ground most installations will get more reflected light. Less daylight hours in Winter can be partly offset by those factors.

Cost vs. benefit on solar - there are many factors that go into that calculation; everyone has to make their own call.

I look at solar as just one more tool, in my energy toolbox - in an extended outage, the small portable solar system I have at present will see duty for things like charging cell phones, running an AM/FM radio and an LED light or 2 - light loads that I don't want to fire up a gen for, saving fuel for specific runs of heavy loads..... That same system works well for camping. Money well spent, for me.

A good place for Alternative Energy info is homepower, they've been at this a long time:

Renewable Energy & Efficiency Technologies | Home Power Magazine

Rgds, D.

 

[dragoneggs]

I do know that the Honda EU3000i is even quieter than the 2000i at the same loads (we have both). BTW, you can parallel generators of different sizes, such as the 2000 and 3000.

True on the noise but you are not suppose to parallel different sized generators... at least that is true of Honda generators only pair identical units.

 

[newbury]

<snip>

Generator development has really embraced newer tech recently. Ive seen better mufflers installed, electric start kits on gennys as small as 5K. electronic notification pannels to give you advanced diagnostics to troubleshoot it as well as built in watt meters and frequency meters. Built in dual fuel options with the option to run propane with the flip of a switch. For $1000+ I could have had one of these in the 7500w run (9K surge) range.
<snip>

Or you could have bought a simple dual fuel for 8kw on sale for $650 http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/welding/336996-smokin-deal-10-000watt-generator.html though Amazon sells it now for $1200

 

[pwright]

Some comments on solar. Our house is completely off-grid and powered by batteries fed from solar panels with a generator for backup. Really cloudy/overcast days definitely eats into the power generation but 3-4 hours of winter sunlight is enough to bring the batteries up to full after powering the house overnight. With the recent winter storms we have had to run the generator on several days between 4-8 hours per day depending on how much we ran the furnace versus the pellet stove. As 3930dave said, when we had snow on the ground the reflected light was a huge boost in power.

 

[LittleBill21]

Some comments on solar. Our house is completely off-grid and powered by batteries fed from solar panels with a generator for backup. Really cloudy/overcast days definitely eats into the power generation but 3-4 hours of winter sunlight is enough to bring the batteries up to full after powering the house overnight. With the recent winter storms we have had to run the generator on several days between 4-8 hours per day depending on how much we ran the furnace versus the pellet stove. As 3930dave said, when we had snow on the ground the reflected light was a huge boost in power.

what kind of generator are you running for your offgrid house?