Friday, September 2, 2011

Home Electrical Generators

If you live in or near Oxford, MS or for that matter, anywhere in the US these days, you probably have experienced power outages due to many factors.  Inclement weather, earth quakes, extremely hot summer temperatures, electrical grid failures, generation outages and transformer failures are just a few items that can cause you to loose power for extended periods of time.  It seems like this year for all of us, these events have occurred all too often and left many of us in the dark.  It is even worse if you are away from home and your home, including your refrigerator/freezer leave you with spoiled food, extremely high temperatures and in some cases, major humidity issues that you only find when you return home.  What a vacation?????

Generac Guardian Series™ 5872 - 14kW Essential Circuit Standby Generator System
Thank goodness there are some solutions for these problems today that are not as costly as they once were.  I am specifically talking about a partial or whole house permanently installed generator powered by natural gas.  What they do is sit outside your home, very much in size like that of a central air conditioning condenser unit that only come on following a greater than 2 minute power outage.  They are very easy to maintain, require a automatic weekly 12 minute operation to maintain the battery charge and can provide partial or full house generating capacity, in all or only partial areas of electrical need.

I installed a partial home generator in my home three years ago when I built it and have been very pleased with the results.  While I have had it come on automatically on multiple occasions, its greatest use was this summer when a tornado hit our neighborhood and did much damage leaving the power out for an extended period of time.  The unit came on and provided power for us to follow the weather via TV and keep up with what was happening in the area for the next 24 hours before power was restored.  During this time, two additional tornadoes occurred, one of which devastated many homes in an area near ours.

It is not very difficult for an electrician to install one of these as depicted below and if you specify natural gas or propane as the fuel of choice, the run time is essentially unlimited.  I highly recommend consideration of a whole or partial home generator, based on my experience, even if you only have to use it once a year.  You will be amazed at the Peace of Mind it brings to you as a home owner.  If you are interested and want to get a view of how some raters pick units, take a look at this URL (http://www.generators.smps.us/ratings.html) on the internet.

4 comments:

  1. Every year thousands of people are injured or killed from electrical shocks/contacts. They are exposed to dangers such as electric shock, electrocution, burns, fires, and explosions. The proper grounding of electrode system, conductors, equipment, and equipment conductors can help us in reducing the number of casualties. In order to understand grounding and bonding effectively, Contractor CE will certainly help you in understanding the best way of grounding and bonding per the National Electrical Code (NEC) 2008 standards.

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  2. Excellent points that should always be adhered to. Thanks for your post and pointing out the importance of proper electrical grounding.

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  3. I am definitely going to consider a natural gas generator. I've also heard good things about using a diesel generator, though. I know diesel car engines tend to hog less fuel comparatively. Is this true for diesel generators as well? I would like to do a comparison between the two. Or at least read about someone who has. Do you know where I could find that kind of information?

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  4. Excellent question and one that has multiple answers, depending on your situation. A good study available on the net that has answers for your question can be found at http://titanenergy.com/smartpower/learn-more/which-fuel-is-better-for-a-generator-diesel-or-natural-gas/.

    Thanks for your question concerning alternate fuel considerations.

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