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1 edit | reply to pandora
Re: Anyone have a suggestion for standby whole home generator? said by pandora:His suggestion is a 20K air cooled Generac. These run around $4,000. That seems grossly exaggerated. I have a 2350sqft house, all-electric and the highest momentary load (for more than 1sec) that I've seen in months of monitoring was below 15kW. That with both heat pumps, the range and the drier running.
This is 3 days worth of power usage in Feb 2011 when I registered the highest momentary use.
If you have propane then it makes sense to use it for heating in an emergency - so your highest load would be greatly reduced. To me it makes no sense to use propane to produce electricity at 25% efficiency and then turn it back into heat at 100-300% efficiency.
said by pandora:Does anyone have a link comparing the electrical quality of power produced by various generator brands? For example how well shaped the sine waves are, and how much noise is created? Then reliability and of course price. That will highly depend on the load that you connect. In theory the waves are sine with no load connected. Once you connect a load all bets are off. Connect a heater? Will likely stay sine. Connect a massive load with a switching power supply? No more sine. However many current electronics couldn't care less about the shape of the wave - just think that a typical UPS feeds a somewhat square wave. |
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| said by cowboyro:said by pandora:His suggestion is a 20K air cooled Generac. These run around $4,000. That seems grossly exaggerated. I have a 2350sqft house, all-electric and the highest momentary load (for more than 1sec) that I've seen in months of monitoring was below 15kW. That with both heat pumps, the range and the drier running. After remodel the house will be approximately 5,000 sq ft. We will have 2 4 ton heat pumps running 4 A/C zones.
The electrician has suggested a 20K unit, guess I could ask him for more information about why he made this suggestion.
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Reviews:
·AT&T U-Verse
| said by pandora:We will have 2 4 ton heat pumps running 4 A/C zones.
The electrician has suggested a 20K unit, guess I could ask him for more information about why he made this suggestion.
I remember from a different thread now...
a 4-ton unit will suck some 3000-4000W depending on temperature.
Problem is that you'll have strips for backup heat IIRC and at 10000W each you may be already over the power of the generator.
In all honesty I'd use the propane for backup heat and then a 10kW generator will do. Or if you *really need* to run both units in summer for AC then the 20kW will insure that both can run. |
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