Generator fuel consumption

[Larry Caldwell]

My 8500/7500 generator consumes about a gallon per hour. The good news is I can run everything in the house off this thing. After a 10 day outage from an ice storm, I decided I'd rather have a better option than candles.

I've thought seriously about getting a solar generator but the costs are a bit high for now. The big advantage is not having to worry about finding gas or putting up with the noise.

Has anyone tried a solar unit? Here's a link for an example ...

135 Amp 4000 Watt Solar Generator Just Plug and Play not A Kit | eBay

You would still need the solar panels, which would run you several thousand dollars more. The photos just show a battery box and inverter. If the sun doesn't shine, you are out of luck. To pull 4000 watts out of batteries for any length of time, you need a massive battery installation that weighs hundreds of pounds.

 

[4shorts]

Last year we lost our power for 11 hours. It was in the winter but luckily it wasn't cold at the time. Last fall I decided to pick up a new generator so I went with the Honda EM6500EX. I built a custom shelter for it, poured a cement slab to bolt it to and figured now that it's in place we'd never get to use it.
Well New Year's Eve all heck broke out. The power company had a fire in one of their substations shutting it down then a blizzard came through brining massive amounts of snow with record low temps shutting down the island putting over 140.000 people in the dark.

Well I started up that new generator. It was running our oil fired furnace, one fridge, one freezer, a pile of lights but I had replaced them with LEDs. We had the tv and internet. In nine hours we burnt 2.5 gallons of gas. To say we were happy campers would be an understatement. The power outages lasted a full week and it's still not stable but it's a great sense if security having it in place and I'm really happy we have it here now. We hardly knew we lost the power. :cool2:

 

[MikePA]

I have the Honda EM5000SX connected to an APC UTS10BI automatic transfer switch. That's a great looking enclosure. You should sell them as a kit. Our generator is sitting on our open front porch behind a 3 sided screen using louvered shutters. I couldn't find any commercial enclosure I liked.

The Honda site indicates 10.4 hours on a tank of gas for the 6500, so 9 hours on 2.5 gallons is really good.

 

[4shorts]

I have the Honda EM5000SX connected to an APC UTS10BI automatic transfer switch. That's a great looking enclosure. You should sell them as a kit. Our generator is sitting on our open front porch behind a 3 sided screen using louvered shutters. I couldn't find any commercial enclosure I liked.

The Honda site indicates 10.4 hours on a tank of gas for the 6500, so 9 hours on 2.5 gallons is really good.

I couldn't believe it myself when I refuelled it. I worked as a Honda tech at one time and always liked the product. I figure its not running half capacity to only burn that plus it was the first time running. I was very happy.

I looked everywhere for an inclosure to put our generator in. I looked at those plastic boxes, plastic sheds... Couldn't find anything that was secure or fireproof. I needed something that would take a hit if a tree fell on it and I wanted a theft alarm system in it. Couldn't find it so I had to build it. Took me a week to fabricate. It's made out of 1/4 and 1/7th plate. Weighs in at 1500 lbs. I wanted a portable generator because I can use it at other tasks around the property. I put the Honda wireless remote starter on ours and I'm using a Square D transfer switch in the house.

 

[John White]

One way to make sure the power never goes out is to get a good generator. A couple years a storm came through here and power was knocked out for two weeks. It just happened I had just bought about 30 gal of fuel to take with us on a UTV trip. Plus what I had in my motor home tank. I would start my gen (6.5k) up and run it about three hours in morning. Make coffee, breakfast. Shut it off at around 10 AM. Come home at 12, wife would make lunch. Run it till about 2pm, shut it off and start it up about 6pm till we went to bed. This would keep the freezers and freg. cold. But still went through a lot of gas. I figured somewhere around $40 a day. You couldn't even get gas at the stations. They were using bob cats inside grocery stores and loading all the spoiled meat, &produce and dumping it in dumpsters. There was fights at one gas station that had a back up gen to run the pumps. I decided to get serious about a gen. I ran into a 8.5 kw with a 4 cyl Kubota. diesel. It is very stingy on fuel. I have a diesel tractor, three diesel trucks, that are usually over half full. Like Moss said now when the power goes off, by the time I get it dusted off and set up the power comes back on. Its just like a insurance policy. I had a accidental policy because I am self employed. Paid on it for over 20years, never needed it. Canceled it, figured it was a waste of money. Had a accident 6mo later that almost severed my arm. A gen is sort of like a 45 on your night stand, cocked and locked, or a fire extinguisher, better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it. Can you imagine what would have happened the last few days when it was -10 if we had a major power outage for a few days with that temperature. Not to mention the problem us country folks would have with flushing the toilet. A lot of folks do not have a gravity fed leach field. Many have mound system or one that requires elec. to work.

 

[bigtiller]

Last year we lost our power for 11 hours. It was in the winter but luckily it wasn't cold at the time. Last fall I decided to pick up a new generator so I went with the Honda EM6500EX. I built a custom shelter for it, poured a cement slab to bolt it to and figured now that it's in place we'd never get to use it.
Well New Year's Eve all heck broke out. The power company had a fire in one of their substations shutting it down then a blizzard came through brining massive amounts of snow with record low temps shutting down the island putting over 140.000 people in the dark.

Well I started up that new generator. It was running our oil fired furnace, one fridge, one freezer, a pile of lights but I had replaced them with LEDs. We had the tv and internet. In nine hours we burnt 2.5 gallons of gas. To say we were happy campers would be an understatement. The power outages lasted a full week and it's still not stable but it's a great sense if security having it in place and I'm really happy we have it here now. We hardly knew we lost the power. :cool2:

I like your shelter, great job!!

How did you run the exhaust out?

 

[CobyRupert]

No. Above is exactly what you wrote.
I only tried to give you a simple technical tip for your post. No need to get defensive and start making things up.

I didn't mean to sound defensive, just wanted to explain why I don't need to change any units to kW-hrs as you erroneously suggested. I didn't start making things up and resent the implication. To personally attack me as dishonest rather than defend your claim on what the correct units are says a lot about you. Telling that you didn't try.

Here's my original post: " 1 gal/hr of propane has about 26.8 kW of power in it.....",

Here my exact reply: "Basically I said 1 gal (LP) has 26.8kW-hrs of Energy in it, but I expressed this equivalently as 1gal/hr = 26.8kW of Power. (i.e. I moved the "hr" to the other side of the equation.) "

Now please show me where I made anything up regarding my original post.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

Wood heat, low head gravity feed water, plenty of oil lamps and candles, I don't even bother to get the generator out until the second day of a power outage. About 2 hours of the 4400 watt rig will heat a tank of water and pump two showers. It will run an hour and a quarter on a gallon of gas. A gallon of gas in the 1000w camp generator will chill the freezer and refrigerator and power the TV for 4.5 hours.

 

[4shorts]

I like your shelter, great job!!

How did you run the exhaust out?

Thank you. You'll notice I made a stack to exit the rear of the inclosure. I also machined a special flange that goes right up to the muffler to mate with it. It's a tight fit yet don't require any tools to connect. It has a few added features as well. I did a video on the unit.



- Built out of 1/8th and 1/4 steel plating. Complete system weighs 1500 lbs.
- Custom machined hinges with grease nipples.
- Built in security system.
- Canarm fan for system cooling
- Double stainless steel latches both coded for the one key.
- Hydraulic struts to keep lid open.
- Fold down front section that acts as a loading ramp for the generator.
- Special locking system in floor to hold generator in place.
- Custom exhaust system with top flapper.
- Wireless remote start added.
- Snap-On L.E.D. light added.
- Floor mat that chemical resistant.
- All openings have restricters added to keep critters out.
- Sand basted to remove mill-scale, epoxy primed and painted.
- Custom graphics by Kathy (Wifey)
- G.P.S. Tracking on generator.
- Pour a concrete pad to bolt it too.

 

[V1Rotate]

Very nice!