Mechanos
Veteran Member
I've been looking into a whole house setup as well. What complicates my situation is the load necessary to power the house during the winter is significantly more than during the summer. Our house is 100% electric... Air source heat pump with electric resistance back-up heat, electric range, electric clothes dryer, electric water heater, etc. etc. Some things could be done to cut down on the load requirement like not using the range and dryer at the same time, but the killer is when it's real cold and the air-source heat pump won't quite cut it and the systems calls for the back-up heat. So, a generator that will handle the winter loads would be overkill for the summer loads. My first choice would probably be propane (we don't have natural gas available) due to long term storage concerns, but may go with a diesel unit depending the "deal". I've done some loose analysis and based on those, I'd need a minimum of 19kW to get through a long-term outage in the winter.