Who knows what appliances, etc., you'll have down the road. I'd rather be prepared with enough power than fall short during a week long run of no power in the middle of a bitter winter. Our 17 kW can sustain everything running in our two-story home. multiple room air conditioners, freezers, etc., etc. If one can afford the next up in line in wattage, it's worth the extra protection.
My 7200 can handle anything I NEED, Do I NEED to run the drier and the oven at the same time? No.
It will run the AC or the furnace, with power left over for lights (all LED so VERY little power requirement) - will run the refrigerator and microwave plus lughts - certainly enough to "get by on".
I do not have natural gas available - the reason for my question was to try to guess at fuel usage - so I could guess at propane or gasoline usage ... if I had any diesel machines then that might be another option. I never thought of multi-fuel like Clare mentions. In ~ 25 years we have never been off for more than 3 days. .. and only a few times was it more than 1 day. Usually it's 4 - 10 hour outages, every 2 - 3 months. John T.
Per snipped-for-privacy@invalid.com:
For gasoline, I gravitate towards the least power that I can get by on because of gasoline availability issues during prolonged outages.
But if I were to be buying a natural-gas-powered gennie, I figure out the maximum my house could pull and then get the next larger size - figuring that the additional per-hour NG consumption would not put me in the poorhouse.
Per snipped-for-privacy@ccanoemail.ca:
My house seems to cruise on 800-1200 watts.
Of course, that is without AC.
I started with a single Honda EU2000, and then got a second "Companion" EU2000 so I can run them in parallel giving me 4kw peak (toaster, large microwave, coffee pot....) plus a certain redundancy/fault tolerance if/when one of the bites the big one during an outage.
Furnace and hot water are already NG, but stove/oven are electric, so any cooking is on little propane burners and a propane picnic oven.
A transfer switch mitigates the PITA factor somewhat, but the NG-powered auto-on-auto-off setups still call out to me.... I just have not yet rationalized the 10K that they seem to cost.
During Sandy here we were running two houses on one small portable generator, I think it was ~ 4KW. The neighbor wasn't too bright though, decided to try to run the washing machine. Talk about pushing your luck.... It couldn't support that, but otherwise it ran two gas furnaces, two fridges, one freezer, two power vent gas water heaters, and lights.
It all depends on your loads and your expectations. If you have gas for hot water and don't need to have AC, then I agree your 7200W should be more than enough for a typical home. And having it run on nat gas is perfect, ability to switch to gas is great too if you have any potential use for it other than at the house. Put in an Interlockit on the panel and an inlet, and your good to go a small fraction of the cost on an install of a whole house standby generator. And if it craps out, you can get a new one for $1000, no install $$$ to replace either.
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