Master thread for disasters and generators.

[Poppy]

Rethinking this whole thing about feeding power to my neighbors, I guess I'll just see how a prolonged outage plays out, if we ever have another one. During super storm sandy November 2012, my neighbors lost power for 3 - 11 days. One to the left 11 days, and one to the right 3 days. Mine was out 3 1/2 days. Since then if power went out, it was for a couple of hours, and that was only once or twice.

Friends and neighbors handled - loss of power - pretty well for the first couple of days, after Sandy, but by the third day, many started getting a little antsy.

If an outage occurs during the winter, long enough, I'm sure that I'll supply enough power to run their furnaces for heat. Damage due to frozen pipes can be a bummer.

There's a senior village near my home, and some of the occupants are on oxygen, or in electric wheel chairs. We did a door to door search to check on them and found that many were rationing their oxygen due to the inability to create more, and others were concerned that their mobility units were running low on charge. I wished that I had a means to power them up. Now, with that little 2K inverter generator, I can help a bunch of people out.

 

[idleprocess]

Rethinking this whole thing about feeding power to my neighbors, I guess I'll just see how a prolonged outage plays out, if we ever have another one. During super storm sandy November 2012, my neighbors lost power for 3 - 11 days. One to the left 11 days, and one to the right 3 days. Mine was out 3 1/2 days. Since then if power went out, it was for a couple of hours, and that was only once or twice.

My thinking is that if I end up treating generators like I do UPSs I'll end up with a fleet of small units and fuel will become the rather pronounced bottleneck. I can envision reasonable storage for 20 - 40 at the most - gallons of gasoline before I'm running up against, shall we say volumetric problems to say nothing of rotating stock before it goes bad.

 

[BVH]

I keep 25 gallons on-hand and transfer it from the cans to my vehicles every 6 or 7 months and refill the cans. I use Stabil per the label directions.

 

[idleprocess]

I keep 25 gallons on-hand and transfer it from the cans to my vehicles every 6 or 7 months and refill the cans. I use Stabil per the label directions.

Did a little research on the local(ish) station that sells ethanol-free gasoline and it's 92 octane - better shelf life and both my vehicles will happily burn it if the generators don't. Allegedly +$1.50 gallon vs E10 but that's not really a show-stopper for a semi-annual purchase ~20 miles out of the way.

Now to engineer some secure-ish storage.

 

[Lynx_Arc]

Did a little research on the local(ish) station that sells ethanol-free gasoline and it's 92 octane - better shelf life and both my vehicles will happily burn it if the generators don't. Allegedly +$1.50 gallon vs E10 but that's not really a show-stopper for a semi-annual purchase ~20 miles out of the way.

Now to engineer some secure-ish storage.

I have 2 gas stations near me less than a 1/4 mile away that have ethanol free gas.

 

[Poppy]

My thinking is that if I end up treating generators like I do UPSs I'll end up with a fleet of small units and fuel will become the rather pronounced bottleneck. I can envision reasonable storage for 20 - 40 at the most - gallons of gasoline before I'm running up against, shall we say volumetric problems to say nothing of rotating stock before it goes bad.

LOL... me too!

A couple of days ago I offered to buy this little baby on Craigslist.

It doesn't have spark, and he accepted my low-ball offer. My friend was going to pick it up, but the guy doesn't answer his calls or texts, so I guess he sold it to someone else.

If I got it, I'd have three inverter generators

 

[turbodog]

LOL... me too!

A couple of days ago I offered to buy this little baby on Craigslist.
... guy doesn't answer his calls or texts...

Maybe it's just around here, but a LOT of CL ads are simply trying to scam people. Be careful. I always communicate via CL fake email addresses until I'm satisfied someone is legit and serious.

Not to venture too far of topic, but certain categories of items are 90% scam items (enclosed cargo trailers are particularly bad). Super low prices. Scammers would then try the 'send me the money' scam or similar.

 

[Poppy]

I haven't bought too much off of Craigslist. There are warnings on their site, not to wire money etc. Apparently scamming is a thing.

When I buy something used, depending upon what it is, I expect it to be about 50% of the cost of new, give or take... Around here, it seems that many people ask 80% - 90% of new price, regardless of its age, and some scammers ask 120% or more, with no warranty. Or some will ask full list price when the item can often be found on sale.

Buyer... beware!

Thanks for the tip

 

[BVH]

Contrary to what I would have said before I used Craigslist, I have accomplished about 3 dozen transactions over an 8 year period and every single transaction has been first rate. No problems, no scams and every one of the persons involved have been very nice and courteous people. A little hard to believe but pleasantly surprising.

 

[Poppy]

I've also had some positive transactions with craigslist.

Recently I bought a Harbor freight 2000 watt inverter generator for about 1/2 price, and a year or two ago a kayak, where the owner told me where it was, and to leave the cash under a rock. We never met, come to think of it we may never even have spoken, just emailed.

 

[Poppy]

Yesterday, we rented a Honda power washer from the Home depot. I noted that a lot of their gas powered rentals were Hondas. I commented to the sales clerk, that they must be reliable. He said... yeah, they are quiet.

They run at the same 3600 RPM as an open frame genset. Honda engines might be a little less loud than a Briggs and Stratton, but compared to either of my inverter generators, they are loud! I'd forgotten how loud, and what the constant drone of an open frame genset sounds like. I've been considering getting a 5K 240v unit so I can run the central AC if needed. For now, I'll close off a room and run a window AC unit if needed.

Hopefully 240V inverter generators will come down in price in the next couple of years.

 

[idleprocess]

Hopefully 240V inverter generators will come down in price in the next couple of years.

If you're willing to live the more exciting life that is the lower end of the generator market, inverter generators are available that can approach lower-end central AC wattages (probably want a soft starter however). A-iPower and DuroMax badge-engineer their own variants of the Senci SC-8000i with both versions generally selling for less than $3000.

 

[Poppy]

idelprocess, $3000 is a little rich for my blood.

It would be a different story if I was in a outage prone area, but, I'm not.

A small 240V open frame generator can be had for about $450 new and half that used. I imagine that they will continue to drop in price when more 240V inverter gensets become available both new and used. Eventually the inverters will drop in price too.

For example, the $1200 2000i Honda now has $400 competitors, and the Hondas can be had used for $800 or less.

 

[idleprocess]

idelprocess, $3000 is a little rich for my blood.

It would be a different story if I was in a outage prone area, but, I'm not.

Same here in both cases; I suspect that I'll use my setup >90% of the time for rehearsal / anti-atrophy purposes.

I point out the Sensci SC-8000i because it's markedly than cheaper the Honda EU7000iS.

A small 240V open frame generator can be had for about $450 new and half that used. I imagine that they will continue to drop in price when more 240V inverter gensets become available both new and used. Eventually the inverters will drop in price too.

My concern about 'jobsite' generators would be noise and the relative safety of the waveform. I can cut down on the noise to a degree with a doghouse, but with most makes not even publishing THD specs I'm not optimistic that the waveform will even be a UPS's "modified square wave" good.

 

[Poppy]

LOL... I guess ignorance is bliss. I don't know enough about the sensitivity of electronics regarding pure wave form, vs not, to be too concerned about it.

The noise can be significantly diminished with a dog house, to the extent that it will not be uncomfortable for you or your neighbors, but it would be challenged to reduce the sound enough to be invisible to someone looking to steal the gennie.

Fuel consumption is one of my concerns. IIRC my 10 HP briggs powered generator would run 8 hours on 5 gallons of gas. So if I was conservative with it and ran it one hour on, and two hours off, that would be 5 gallons a day. For a day or two, that would not be a problem, but if the outage was more than that, and fuel was hard to come by, that could be a problem. I don't want to store too much gasoline on my property.

I think/hope, that for ten months out of the year, I'll be comfortable running the house on a single 2000/1600 watt inverter generator. That'll be refrigerator and freezer, TV modem etc (entertainment), and a few lights. During the winter months, it should power the hot water heat circulation pump. I may have to step up to the 3500/3000 watt unit I have. Time will tell. At least, running those fuel sipping units, I may have entertainment all day, and not have to be as concerned about conserving fuel.

 

[Poppy]

<SNIP>


My concern about 'jobsite' generators would be noise and the relative safety of the waveform. I can cut down on the noise to a degree with a doghouse, but with most makes not even publishing THD specs I'm not optimistic that the waveform will even be a UPS's "modified square wave" good.

Taken from: https://blog.tripplite.com/pure-sine-wave-vs-modified-sine-wave-explained

[FONT=&quot]When a UPS system receives power and frequency from the AC line that is within an acceptable range, it will not do anything to correct it. The incoming utility power is typically a pure sine wave and this is what connected equipment expect. However, if the UPS system detects a power disturbance such as a blackout, over- or under-voltage condition, or frequency change, it will use it's battery to correct the condition and restore clean power.

[/FONT]

If a UPS detects a frequency change, and switches to battery power, will the battery continue to take a charge from a generator, even if it isn't quite clean?

 

[turbodog]

...
If a UPS detects a frequency change, and switches to battery power, will the battery continue to take a charge from a generator, even if it isn't quite clean?

Not normally. Some of the higher units have something called trim/boost, where they trim down or boost up VOLTAGE levels without going on battery.

 

[idleprocess]

If a UPS detects a frequency change, and switches to battery power, will the battery continue to take a charge from a generator, even if it isn't quite clean?

That's going to depend on the UPS. I'm lousy with low-end secondhand UPSs so I tried to double the runtime of the fiber terminal by plugging one UPS into another. As soon as the power went out both units triggered; the 'downstream' UPS saw the modified sine wave output from the upstream UPS and treated it like a power outage. If I used a sine wave UPS upstream I might have realized my goal, but those are indeed far more expensive.

 

[turbodog]

If you have room, you can run the batteries in parallel. Make a parallel wire for the battery packs.

 

[Lynx_Arc]

My problem with UPSes is replacing the batteries cost almost as much (or more) than just buying a new one. Lead acid battery prices are nuts these days I used to be able to buy UPS batteries for $10 each now it is hard to find them much under $25. We really need a cheaper better battery alternative for UPSes, something that lasts 10 years or is less than half the price per watt hour than SLAs.