Comment by Aurornis

Comment by Aurornis 13 hours ago

> Best is to have some type of long term storage like a Diesel generator only for estimated 1-2 weeks of the year depending on location where it will be needed.

Unless you live in a location without much sunlight, it’s better to invest in a solar powered system with a transfer switch to go off grid.

If you size the system appropriately it can recharge the battery by day during an outage and now you can operate off-grid for a very long time.

Diesel generators come with maintenance overhead that adds up year over year. They also contribute nothing during normal times, as opposed to a solar install which can offset electricity costs or even earn money.

If you live somewhere dark this is less helpful, though.

Consumption also matters. Some people have eye-popping amounts of electricity consumption while other households get by with far less. The difference, including heating and cooling costs, is surprisingly large between the highest and lowest households.

itsoktocry 13 hours ago

>Diesel generators come with maintenance overhead that adds up year over year.

A good diesel generator is going to need very little maintenance operating few hundred hours per year.

Why do people talk about engines like they are unreliable? They are modern marvels.

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toomuchtodo 13 hours ago

I just replaced a residential condo building's fossil gas generator (Kohler 48RCLC), at a cost of ~$24k, because the association didn't perform the required maintenance on it. Yes, fossil generators can be reliable if you do the maintenance and you monitor to ensure they are doing a test run weekly/monthly under load. Lots of people don't.
My Powerwall quietly sits there charged and waiting to be under load, and charges to full when storm mode is activated (or I activate it manually). It has a 10 year warranty, 15 years if part of a virtual power plant (which my storage participates in with the local utility). It requires no maintenance. I also received a 30% federal tax credit for the Powerwall, which the building will not receive for a generator.

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- westmeal 12 hours ago
  
  Diesel is not the same as a gas generator. There are a lot of things to go wrong with gas engines tbh. Diesel on the other hand will mostly run without too much fuss so long as there is compression and there is fuel.
  
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  toomuchtodo 12 hours ago
  
  Diesel lasts longer, but you should also be polishing the diesel fuel to keep it in good condition, which is another point of failure. When fossil gas is available, it is usually elected as the fuel of choice because this is unnecessary (as the generator is hooked up to gas pipelines, and no storage consideration is required). Propane will last forever in a proper container, but poses more storage risk than diesel.
  TLDR Diesel generators where you might be without mains for a while and intend to replenish the fuel with deliveries during the outage, fossil gas for use cases where gas delivery pipelines are available (urban, suburban), propane for offgrid use cases (rural, cell towers, etc) where fuel longevity is a concern.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_polishing
  
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swiftcoder 13 hours ago

They are modern marvels indeed, but if you were to park your car in a field in May, by New Years when you go to start it up, it's a coin-flip whether or not it will.
Generators need to be exercised and maintained. You are committing to fire that thing up for a few hours every month, just to make sure it's in running order when you need it (I used to work next to a hospital that fired them every week).

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- nick49488171 13 hours ago
  
  For a modern car, If mice don't get into it and you have a battery maintainer, it's close to 100% going to start right up.
  
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  aduty 12 hours ago
  
  That fuel is probably going to be bad by then thanks to the ethanol that's put in it. Diesel is much more stable in that case.
  
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- themafia 10 hours ago
  
  We have several large scale full building generators. Our exercise cycles are 15 minutes once a week. Our diesel mechanics fully service the engines every 3 to 6 months depending on size and importance.
  Fuel is easy because we have an external tank with a visual gauge that you can read from several feet away. When they added DEF they neglected to add a DEF gauge that's as easy to read. Thank goodness they sell DEF at any old truck stop.
  
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- quickthrowman 12 hours ago
  
  > Generators need to be exercised and maintained. You are committing to fire that thing up for a few hours every month, just to make sure it's in running order when you need it (I used to work next to a hospital that fired them every week).
  This can easily be automated, Generac will handle testing for residential generators.
  
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Aurornis 5 hours ago

> operating few hundred hours per year
Do you really have a few hundred hours of power outage per year?
Around here, the power is so stable that we go multiple years without an outage that lasts longer than a few seconds.
If I installed a generator it wouldn’t a couple hundred hours per year. It wouldn’t run at all for years at a time unless I manually exercised it as yet another maintenance task for my already too long list of things to maintain.

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jwr 12 hours ago

You do need to run it at least once per quarter, though.

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bbarnett 13 hours ago

Unless you live in a location without much sunlight, it’s better to invest in a solar powered system with a transfer switch to go off grid

You're sadly describing my situation. Dec sees 6 hours of light, less even, and while the sun does get above the horizon, it doesn't get over the top of the forest.

(The trees have no leaves, but there's still a lot of tree trunks between me and sun.)

Bah.

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