Water heaters

But like you, here in the rural areas of NYS, a portable generator is as common as the pickup truck, and unlike propane or fuel oil, electricity doesn't have to be delivered to your house by someone in a big truck at their convenience.

Reply to
willshak
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As to delivery. Both electricity and the fossil fuels require delivery. One through wires, other through truck. Both have problems. I'm in surburbia of western NYS. My area has delivery failures, sometimes the electric is out. Sometimes the truck guy has the flu and isn't working for a few days. But, propane and fuel oil at least give me a bit of time buffer beween when I call for refil and when I run out. In either case, it's far from being perfect world.

But like you, here in the rural areas of NYS, a portable generator is as common as the pickup truck, and unlike propane or fuel oil, electricity doesn't have to be delivered to your house by someone in a big truck at their convenience.

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

Yes, I measured one too and it was only taking a couple hundred watts. It takes more to get it going for the first few seconds of course. But I was very surprised at how little modern appliances take. During Sandy we ran two houses that included 3 gas furnaces, 4 freezers/refrigerators, two gas hot water heaters with blowers, plus some lights. I did some minimal load management on my end, ie only one furnace at a time, don't know what the neighbor did. And this was with a junko 3500W Chinese generator, with one house on the end of about 150 ft of extension cord. I was expecting some decent voltage drop at the far end, but it held nicely at 115V or so.

I had a Killawatt meter hooked to the extension cord so I could monitor it. That meter is a great tool and very useful for those with generators so you can see what's going on. It reset my expectations on what size generator you really need. I'd say 5KW max would be plenty for me. Before this experience, I was thinking more like 7 or 8.

Reply to
trader4

If they have so much electricity that they are exporting it, why are they giving discounts for off peak usage?

Reply to
DerbyDad03
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And what exactly are those rates that are so low? The only really cheap source of electricity that I know of is hydro. And there is only so much of that around, for obvious reasons.

Reply to
trader4

Please actually try it, some day soon. My last furnace (really simple Miller) ran about 700 watts. So, I bought a marine battery and inverter. Find out that the inverter did not run the furnace. The inverter would go into "low battery" alert, and I never did get the furnace to run.

My furnace takes 300 watts. I measured it. I cold use my battery and inverter for less than 3 hrs continuous run. If I had too, I would skimp on temperature. Or, start a generator.

Greg

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

Glad to hear someone was successful. My experience has been trying to run one furnace, and no lights. With a 1200 watt ETQ generator (two stroke, junker) it was nice to be able to run a furnace. One time I ran ancient furnace with probably half horse blower motor.

Yes, I measured one too and it was only taking a couple hundred watts. It takes more to get it going for the first few seconds of course. But I was very surprised at how little modern appliances take.

During Sandy we ran two houses that included 3 gas furnaces, 4 freezers/refrigerators, two gas hot water heaters with blowers, plus some lights. I did some minimal load management on my end, ie only one furnace at a time, don't know what the neighbor did.

And this was with a junko 3500W Chinese generator, with one house on the end of about 150 ft of extension cord. I was expecting some decent voltage drop at the far end, but it held nicely at 115V or so.

I had a Killawatt meter hooked to the extension cord so I could monitor it. That meter is a great tool and very useful for those with generators so you can see what's going on. It reset my expectations on what size generator you really need. I'd say 5KW max would be plenty for me. Before this experience, I was thinking more like 7 or 8.

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

I did back-feed, the neighbor used extension cords. Why didn't you run a few lights? 100W CFL is only 23W. That's one good thing about them. Come generator time, unless you have a lot of them, they don't amount to much. And if you connect the generator via the panel, you can pretty much leave the whole house powered, then just turn on the lights you need in any area selectively.

Reply to
trader4

I was surprised how little power refrigerators use from recent investigations. My furnace has slow ramp fan, no surge. Microwaves ovens always use more power than they put out.

Greg

Reply to
gregz

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