Electric vs propane

Would it make more sense to buy a larger generator? You might be able to get a (Coleman) 5,000 watt for the price of the (Honda).

Reply to
Stormin Mormon
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I think what you mean is you can't sync the typical portable generator that doesn't use inverter technology.

They do it on the output side with inverters.

Depend on what the requirements are. If you need something that produces a very clean sine wave, is thrifty on fuel, and makes a lot less noise, they are obviously worth it to some people. If you're using them at an outdoor fair for example, just being a lot more quiet could make it worth it.

They are routinely called generators by the industry and the folks using them. If you want to change to alternator, it wouldn't solve anything, because then you'd have to call all the typical portable generators alternators too, because that's what they really are.

Reply to
trader4

Per Stormin Mormon:

I've been going back-and-forth on that one - and still haven't made a final choice.

The relevant tradeoffs seem to be fuel consumption, noise, reliability, ease of use, and portability

Running a single EU2000 burns less than a third of what a 5kw gennie does. It's not so much the cost - because use would be limited to outages. But if run on gas, fuel availability/storage becomes a real issue.

I can only store so much gasoline and there are hazards and inconveniences associated with storing gasoline. My neighbor was driving heaven-knows-where to stand in line to buy gas for his Home Depot monster. I had no problem with five 5-gallon containers of gasoline on hand, but it was getting close. Hence my flirtation with Propane or NG.

Noise is self-evident if you've been around one or the other.

Reliability is in redundancy. With a pair of EU2000's one would run full time, but the other only around meal times when we'd want to run high-draw appliances like the big microwave oven, coffee maker, toaster, and so-forth. Actually we get by pretty well on a singe EU2000 with a smart transfer switch. Put some toast in the toaster, and the switch just takes as many other circuits offline as needed to feed the toaster and then brings them back when the toaster is done.

The real utility of the pair is that one could fail and we'd still be covered. The other day I talked to a guy who has a 20kw propane-powered setup (well water, sewage has to be pumped uphill to a sand field...) whose alternator failed part way through his recent 7-day outage (ours was only 4.5... his was 7).

Clearly a single gennie is easier to use. No going out to the shed to fire up or turn off the second one is a convenience.

Portability comes when/if somebody close needs a generator. The EU2000's weigh less than fifty pounds and can be carried/loaded into a vehicle by one person. The flip side of that is that they're easy to steal (and *very* easy to sell).

I liked the summary of tradeoffs at

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Reply to
(PeteCresswell)

Sounds like a very good description of the merits. Another advantage of having two is that if you have a friend or relative that needs to be bailed out, you could lend one for a day so that they could get their fridge /freezer chilled down again too, run a power vent water heater if they have one, etc. The noise difference can be a real factor with the inverter based ones. Since they decouple engine from frequency, they can run at lower, quieter RPMs. If you have neighbors close by, etc that could be a factor.

Reply to
trader4

Per snipped-for-privacy@optonline.net:

I didn't say it, but being The Good Guy for somebody without losing power myself is a significant factor to me.

There's another aspect to the noise thing: with a neighbor running one of Home Depot's high-volume monsters less than fifty feet away, my little EU2000 becomes pretty-much unnoticeable except for the fact that lights are on in the house. Run it in the garden shed with a hasp and padlock on the door and an IP cam inside, and my comfort level with theft becomes acceptable.

Reply to
(PeteCresswell)

(Next time, they will expect the service.)

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

On Fri, 21 Feb 2014 09:38:36 -0500, "(PeteCresswell)" wrote in

This is a very valid concern. I live in a rural area and have a 5 Kw cheap generator. It burns about 1/3 gal of gasoline per hour under load. Most of our power outages are 1 hour to 24 hours, but some have been as long as 10 days.

I keep 30 gals (6 days worth) stored out in the tractor shed but it requires management (cycling through the farm vehicles) to avoid going stale. It's a pain in the ass, but I can't justify the cost of a large propane tank just to avoid the work. If storing that much gas was illegal or dangerous that would be another matter and I would go with propane or (even better: NG). Note however that propane or NG will produce about 20% less power from the gen unit.

Another consideration is that cheap gen units have a cheap generator which produces pretty poor quality power that may be a real problem for modern electronics. The better gen units use inverters to produce a better quality power.

Reply to
CRNG

One cause of poor power quality from POS portable generators is the electrical receptacle/plug connection. Cheap generators tend to have low quality receptacles. And since generators are not stored under ideal conditions, those low quality receptacle contacts become corroded. Throw in some engine vibrations and you've got the recipe for a poor/intermittent electrical connection loaded with spikes.

And if that loose connection happens to be the neutral on an unbalanced load...uh oh!

To minimize the vibration problem, I took out the receptacles and soldered in 8' pigtails and placed the receptacles at the end of the cord.

Reply to
Bubba

There's something I can't figure out. There are heat pumps today that have COP of 2 or better down into the teens, single digits even. Yet the reports of real world results, they don't seem to pan out, with a typical excuse being:

Control system cuts it over to full alternate source, eg electric at 30F. Why would you do that if the heat pump is still 2X+ more cost effective at delivering heat than just resistance heat? The control system part is trivial.

It seems to me that something weird is going on. It's like they misunderstand the balance point concept. Balance point, as I understand it, is the temp point below which the heat pump can't supply the total heat required, not where it's no longer functional, more efficient than resistance heat, etc. So, for a case like the OP, I would think a heat pump would be ideal. Get one sized so that above say 25F it can supply all the heat. Below that, it still runs, generating heat less than it would cost with just electric, but it's supplemented by resistance heat.

Another aspect seems to be that there is a sizing issue, ie the size of a heat pump to supply all the heat at 20F means you have a unit that's not properly sized for summer. But they have two stage HP's, so what's up with that? Run it a high stage for heat, and in the summer high stage if quick cooling is needed, low stage otherwise.

Reply to
trader4

er. However, I lease my tank from Southern States and they come unannounced to fill it up. I had it filled up in October, I think that bill was 600 bu cks. In January they came again. That was 741 bucks. I just had a bill left on my door where they came the other day and the bill was another 700 buck s. On the last bill it showed propane is 3.30 a gallon I believe.

th charge plus the rate is .06560 during the winter. I am not sure how to c ompare these two, but I am assuming electricity is cheaper in the long run?

er. And I do use a lot of hot water with two girls in the house and I will admit I love my showers. But I have only a 1500 square foot house. It was b uilt in the mid 90's and everything is insulated as well as I can. (Althoug h my walls are only 2x4).

ing to convince my wife to let me install a wood burning fireplace with a w ater heater option. (I actually found a company that sells a fire place tha t is a wood burning furnace)

f due to installation costs. I have 5 acres which is plenty room for the fi eld lines. However, in my area there are very few basements. (I only have a crawl space). I am not sure if one of those can be installed in a crawl sp ace or not.

can choose which one to utilize based on the rate because things vary so w idely. Maybe if I were to install an electric furnace somehow still keeping the propane furnace under the house where I could easily switch from one t o another.

one reason you are maybe having lower electric bills is that heat is usuall y the main factor in home bills i had electric base board in me country home till recently then to save mone i changed to the modern baseboard heaters with the oil in them i saved money but its still very expensive even tho i went from using a 22

0 volt down to 120 volt & still never seemed to keep the house warm im remodeling my house now & have decided to try the radiant floor heat they say it can save up to 30%or 40% according to whos writing the info not sure yet but i have been studying it a lot & for a nominal fee i can d o all the work myself to install it im doing mine under the hardwood & hopefully that will help heat with the bills too im going to use a propane gas boiler or a higher btu rated hot water heate r than just a regular hot water heater im sure that later on theyll figure out a way to raise the bills in any ci rcumstance but my taking the kids home for a long 3 day weekend & us spendi ng a day & night at my moms & still having a $276 electric bill for our ple asure of keeping the heat low cause of trouble in the past with the electri c bills just didnt seem to make a lot of sense to me my mom has propane & she runs it sky high with the heat all year long & pays out over $300 a month all the time id hate it but id never keep it that high either hers stays in the 80s in side still thats just a fraction of what mine would have been had i chosen not to change it my insulation has always been pretty good too even added new windows downstairs after we got those kind of bills just go online & find out bout as many options as you can nephew has the geothermal they love it but its over $30, 000 to install maybe bout half if you do it yourself the lines from outside come up to the side of the house then into the basem ent if youve only a crawl space then possibly you can do that but use the new spray foam insulation to seal it up good but like every thing be sure to ask around about it hope it works out for you i hate to pay out a lot of money
Reply to
puckett.stuart

snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com:

This past week I pain $5.10 a gallon for a 70 gal. fill-up. $400 with tax and other charges.

Made me think of changing my cooking range and water heater to electric. Gets rid of propane tank rent too. Not sure it would pay off in my remaining years though, if it even was cheaper.

Reply to
KenK

Especially if the jump in propane prices is, as expected, temporary. Come the end of this long winter, prices will probably go back down again. Assuming the weather next winter goes back to normal, too, odds are there won't be this level of sticker shock for filling the propane tank next autumn.

Reply to
Moe DeLoughan

The advantage of propane, it's energy onsite. When the ice storm pulls down the power wires, your propane still works, till it runs out.

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

Absolutely. The only thing lost is the oven, but we don't stop cooking for power failures. With city water, life goes on.

Reply to
Ed Pawlowski

On Tuesday, February 25, 2014 12:13:03 PM UTC-5, snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote :

:

ater. However, I lease my tank from Southern States and they come unannounc ed to fill it up. I had it filled up in October, I think that bill was 600 bucks. In January they came again. That was 741 bucks. I just had a bill le ft on my door where they came the other day and the bill was another 700 bu cks. On the last bill it showed propane is 3.30 a gallon I believe.

onth charge plus the rate is .06560 during the winter. I am not sure how to compare these two, but I am assuming electricity is cheaper in the long ru n?

nter. And I do use a lot of hot water with two girls in the house and I wil l admit I love my showers. But I have only a 1500 square foot house. It was built in the mid 90's and everything is insulated as well as I can. (Altho ugh my walls are only 2x4).

rying to convince my wife to let me install a wood burning fireplace with a water heater option. (I actually found a company that sells a fire place t hat is a wood burning furnace)

elf due to installation costs. I have 5 acres which is plenty room for the field lines. However, in my area there are very few basements. (I only have a crawl space). I am not sure if one of those can be installed in a crawl space or not.

I can choose which one to utilize based on the rate because things vary so widely. Maybe if I were to install an electric furnace somehow still keepi ng the propane furnace under the house where I could easily switch from one to another.

lly the main factor in home bills

220 volt down to 120 volt

do all the work myself to install it

ter than just a regular hot water heater

circumstance but my taking the kids home for a long 3 day weekend & us spen ding a day & night at my moms & still having a $276 electric bill for our p leasure of keeping the heat low cause of trouble in the past with the elect ric bills just didnt seem to make a lot of sense to me

t to change it

w spray foam insulation to seal it up good

idiot troll

Reply to
trader4

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full quoter

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

ROFLMAO! Good one, Stormy!

Reply to
0ren

And you're a full quoter, too, Oren.

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

Is this better? ;-)

Reply to
0ren

Yes, much. Didn't know anyone out there knew how / was willing to trim text. And leave enough to be relevant. Question to go with the answer.

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

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