My Ice storm/ generator lessons

[ultrarunner]

We put in 22 LED pole mounted fixtures that work great at the Christmas Tree farm...

That was until the drill to bore the hole in the base of the trunk is turned on... all 22 LED lights go out and then come back on...

Told my brother I expect this to shorten the life of his expensive LED

 

[3930dave]

I have a whole house 22,000 watt natural gas powered generator. If that doesn't keep up I'm doing something wrong.,

Nice capacity, but now I'm confused..... are you talking about multiple houses, or did you have a specific reason for not running the whole-house gen and instead were using those portables on the same house ?

Rgds, D.

 

[4570Man]

Nice capacity, but now I'm confused..... are you talking about multiple houses, or did you have a specific reason for not running the whole-house gen and instead were using those portables on the same house ? Rgds, D.

I recently installed the 22,000 watt one after the last major power outage, so I was using the very thirsty 8,000 watt one then. I bought the small one for my RV, but it will get used more on my wood lot. It is really really really tempting to put 1500 watts of LED lights on my tractor and put the generator on the back. The piece of crap 3,500 watt generator was actually my Grandpas.

 

[3930dave]

I recently installed the 22,000 watt one after the last major power outage, so I was using the very thirsty 8,000 watt one then. I bought the small one for my RV, but it will get used more on my wood lot. It is really really really tempting to put 1500 watts of LED lights on my tractor and put the generator on the back. The piece of crap 3,500 watt generator was actually my Grandpas.

10-4.

Rgds, D.

 

[schmism]

Or you could have bought a simple dual fuel for 8kw on sale for $650

I was just at Costco tonight and they had there dual fuel Champion 8kw for ya like $650. Electric start, nice onboard electronic monitoring etc. IF i had bought that instead of my little one would i have fried my furnace? Probably not. But hey, life lessons are never cheep. I still want the quiet one for other reasons tho.


I looked into a testa wall unit, I'd like to add one but the issue is its just a giant battery. You still need an inverter to do the heavy lifting. One of the nice top of the line outback units i was looking at this week was a grid tie inverter with generator backup. Meaning it would automatically disconnect from the grid, IT would prioritize charging the battery from a renewable source (read solar) but with the generator input you could dial in how much draw you wanted to to make from the generator and then it would balance that input gen-AC to incoming (house) load and charging the batteries. But that setup was north of 5K and the tesla battery is another 3K if and when they start shipping.

SO basicly im back to spending 1K on a larger 8K ish genny and "real" transfer switch and go that way for the future. (or untill i scare up $10K for the 3K of solar i want to put on the garage that doesnt exist yet)

 

[schmism]

Oh and another thing. Ive been on the search for a larger gas tank. The boat tanks are like $100 minus connections. any reason not to use this from CL?

looks to be a plastic side tank from an F150. Guy wants $50 for it. Might be overkill for a reserve tank but hey its half the cost of a 7 gal boat tank.

 

[pwright]

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

A Kohler 7.5c61 propane generator. Picked up an old utility company service trailer that had the generator, air compressor and blower setup.



It sits behind our power shed which you can see is beneath the panels.

 

[ultrarunner]

I can never seem to find deals like this around here...