Quote:
Originally Posted by jyl
This has become topical here in Portland, where lots of people are on their fifth day without electricity and with frozen pipes.
Are folks using generators or batteries for emergency power? What kind, fuel (if applicable), size?
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What kind of heat? I have a 17kw propane generator-it'll run a small heat pump that does our master suite. The main house is on a heat pump/propane furnace-it'll heat fine on the generator, but not cool. We have about 70% of our circuits available on gennie. Oven is not one of those, but we have gas cooktop so we can eat. If you have gas or oil heat, you just need minimal power to run igniters and fan.
We've had power outages as long as 7 days with no issue. This generator is an aircooled model, and is reaching the end of its useful life (installed in 2007). If it runs for more than a couple days I change the oil-its only like 2 qts.
Last house had a 25k liquid cooled installed by PO. More maintenance, but powered everything. When my current setup goes, looking to go to around 20kw and soft starts for the a/c .