I don’t know what propane costs, but I’ve often wondered if you couldn’t produce your own electricity with a natural gas whole house generator cheaper than the power company in the first place.
“I don’t know what propane costs, but I’ve often wondered if you couldn’t produce your own electricity with a natural gas whole house generator cheaper than the power company in the first place.”
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Doubtful.
They have massive economies of scale.
The problem with whole house generators is that of load scaling. Say you have a 2kw generator that uses 1 gallon an hour at full load. It will use 1/2 that at idle.
So when your fridge is running and the coffee pot is on you are as efficient as you can get, but when the brew stops and the fridge reaches cold the load drops to zero, and the fuel usage only drops to half all day and night long...
To say nothing about wear and tear.
The best answer is a solar inverter on a lithium battery pack to run your house, and a small auto start generator to recharge your battery pack that runs at full load while charging.
Oh, and throw in about 600 to 1000w worth of solar panels.
Much cheaper than those 35000w solar systems with no batteries that make money for power company’s.
Scaling again...
I built a 600w solar system with only a 2400w inverter 20 years ago that has a generator input at a friend’s house for critical circuits. It runs their freezer, fridge, washing machine and living and kitchen lights. Lowered their bill they claim by over a 100 bucks a month. It runs 4 days without the grid being up with normal sun levels before they fire up a generator to top the battery pack up for a couple of hours.
They live remote, power is unreliable and love the system.
Note that I recommend a larger inverter for convenience sake. Also the new tesla type lithium batteries.
If you go for the cheaper lead acid type batteries I recommend setting the grid recharge point rather high, ie, don’t let the batteries discharge more than 25% when grid power is available to greatly increase batteries life time.
Acid batteries wear out fast if you deep cycle them a lot.
But before you install a single thing, replace your oven, dryer and water heater with gas and go all led lighting. That will save you more money than anything and reduces your load. Then think alternatives.
Well pumps double your costs and air conditioning is unrealistic.
Feel free to pm me on subject.
/slide
Propane? No....
BUT!
With NG, you might be able to, if you captured the generator engine's coolant and exhaust heat (marine gen-set) and used it to heat your house.
Propane is more expensive than natural gas but where we live we don’t have access to LNG. I actually prefer it that way. It’s not that I don’t trust safe efficient BOOM! natural gas, I don’t trust the people who work on the lines.
-SB