Natural Gas Powered Portable Generator?

   / Natural Gas Powered Portable Generator? #11  
Save yourself a bunch of headache's get a permanent NG unit sized for your house and a HF portable for around the property.
HF has units on sale most of the time.
 
   / Natural Gas Powered Portable Generator?
  • Thread Starter
#12  
Save yourself a bunch of headache's get a permanent NG unit sized for your house and a HF portable for around the property.
HF has units on sale most of the time.
Thanks, but I don't need a permanent unit. All I need is to run my well and furnace alternately and a few lights.
 
   / Natural Gas Powered Portable Generator? #13  
Thanks, but I don't need a permanent unit. All I need is to run my well and furnace alternately and a few lights.

Then don't bother with the hassle of natural gas. Get a gasoline generator and a few 5 gallon cans. Keep stabil in the gas and it wil last for years. Run your generator with a load on it every 3-4 months for half an hour. Put twist lock power plugs on your furnace and well and get a couple extension cords. Easy peasy. No transfer switch. No lock outs. No natural gas conversion. Generator will run anywhere you have gasoline.
 
   / Natural Gas Powered Portable Generator?
  • Thread Starter
#14  
Then don't bother with the hassle of natural gas. Get a gasoline generator and a few 5 gallon cans. Keep stabil in the gas and it wil last for years. Run your generator with a load on it every 3-4 months for half an hour. Put twist lock power plugs on your furnace and well and get a couple extension cords. Easy peasy. No transfer switch. No lock outs. No natural gas conversion. Generator will run anywhere you have gasoline.
I get all that. One can readily buy a gasoline / propane ready generator. My question was :

So my question is can a generator set up for propane be reconfigured to burn natural gas relatively easily?
 
   / Natural Gas Powered Portable Generator? #15  
I get all that. One can readily buy a gasoline / propane ready generator. My question was :

Get a generator that is set up to run on gasoline, not propane, and then get a conversion kit for that to run on either gasoline or natural gas from this company and see if that'll do what you want.
Generator Conversion Kits to Propane(LPG) and Natural Gas

Most of their kits for small engines are $169.

They also have tri-fuel kits for NG, Propane, and gas for $199.
 
   / Natural Gas Powered Portable Generator?
  • Thread Starter
#16  
   / Natural Gas Powered Portable Generator? #17  
So if you go that route, how are you going to connect it to your natural gas line, and make it so that you can easily disconnect it? Do they make quick disconnects for natural gas lines? Or are you going to have to put a wrench to it?
 
   / Natural Gas Powered Portable Generator?
  • Thread Starter
#18  
   / Natural Gas Powered Portable Generator? #19  
Thanks.

So now add it all up. You're looking at $200 for the conversion and $130 for the quick connects, so lets just say $300-350 additional cost for an item that you'll probably not use more than a few hours a year, at best. And it will have diminished power. However, you won't have to store fuel. Pros and cons for sure.

We bought a cheap, Coleman 4500W generator back in 1995 because I wanted to be able to flush our toilet in a power outage, keep our freezer cold, and our house warm if needed. I've used it two-three times over the last 22 years for that purpose. We ran my in-laws house for 3 days with it after a tornado. Other than that, I've only used it for remote power a few times. It's a nice thing to have around. I keep stabil in the gas that's in it, run it a few times a year, and change the oil every few years. Other than that, it sits. I just ran it two weeks ago due to a power outage. I wanted lights and to take a shower, and to keep our tortoise's heat lamp on. My tractor is gasoline powered, so I keep three 6 gallon cans around. The tractor consumes about 1.2 gallons per hour, so the gas gets rotated out about every 15 hours of operation, about 3 times per year. So it never has a chance to go bad. If I didn't have the tractor, I'd rotate the gas out in my car.
 
   / Natural Gas Powered Portable Generator? #20  
If you google generator gas conversion kits you will come up with quite a few choices. I would stay away from the cheap kits that require customer modifications to the existing carb. Don't take the risk of some jury rig, get a complete replacement kit . A fire will negate all you have done quickly. Make sure the manufacturer provides the gas line sizing required for your KW generator. I think my 17.5 KW would require a 1" line. I am considering doing it just for the convenience factor; as I get older and less inclined to wrestle 5 gallon cans. Actually I have a 50 gallon gas tank, but since we moved to town I need to get rid of it as our demand has dropped. I used to fill it twice a year when we had the tree ranch and several power outages a year plus all the gas engines.

Ron
 
 
Top