Which Diesel Generator Would You Recommend or NOT Recommend?????

[Blackbear]

Thank you triple Jim, my good to go number is 10,000 hrs although with a real good monitoring and maintenance program I have heard of people getting 12-15k hrs. as the story goes, I did buy two sort of by mistake, had a bid on one I wanted and never thought my backup bid would fly for $1700. I still suppressed but also have a backup, all for less than 5k, oh wait that's before my inspection, so could be more.
best part is there camo!

 

[Hard Head]

Another consideration is if you have more than 1 power panel in your home. If so I would go with a MEP-004. You can feed the two panels without converting from 3 phase to single phase. I just used a generator power distribution box and I can feed two panels easily. You can use a clamp on amp meter to determine you normal and max loads. For me my max was a 20K spike. My average spike is around 10.5k so the 004 was a great fit. Normal load is under 10k since everything isn't always running. I could have easily went with an 003 and only tied in one panel, which in an emergency situation would have used less fuel and made less noise. If I only wanted a backup for my house I would have gone with the the 003. I have a shop that runs 3 phase so my gen on wheels is what I wanted. I do need an 005 for full operations, but I can get by with the 004. At 1 gal per hour, I added a 50 gallon tank to the gen trailer and two to the truck for extended outages. Heck with 5 gallon fuel can swapping.

 

[Crabbie]

OK this thread is getting silly and is starting to bore me.

I live off the grid and use a MEP 002A as a back up to our hydroelectric turbine. Anyone that can't get by with a 5KW generator when the grid goes down needs to have a serious conversation with the wife and kids about hair dryers, toasters, Keurigs and feeling the need to have ALL the electric appliances on at one. The key to off grid living and living with a backup generator when the grid is down is electric conservation. We live like kings (granite counter tops, internet on all the time, big screen TV, regular GE stainless steel commercial refrig) on a 600 watt hydro turbine. We use more electric during the day than we produce and make more electric during the night than we use.

In the words of Earl Pitts "Wake Up America"

 

[Isaac-1]

Crabbie just try that for a while in Louisiana in the summer the week after a hurricane hits when it is 98 degrees outside and 90+ percent humidity, and add to that a wife that has a medical condition where she has to avoid getting over heated.

 

[jimbo913]

I agree with Isaac-1, and will add that not everyone has access to a hydro plant. The fact that someone wants to be comfortable during a short term weather related outage doesn't mean that in a long term shtf situation they can't live on much less. My goal in a short term power outage is to maintain my familys lifestyle. If the outage appears to be a shtf situation I have backup plans in place and I realize the fuel wont last forever. I would use the fuel only to pump my well and I have a manual pump for when the fuel runs out. 200 gal of diesel will last a LONG time if it only takes two minutes to pump enough for 2-3 days use.

Now back on topic, I think a 10kw MEP should be fine with some minor load management. I would recommend adding a good hard start capacitor to the 5 ton AC unit. If load management is not something you want to deal with then go bigger but the fuel will cost you and much of the time (especially at night) you may run into wet stacking issues if it runs less than 25% load. You may have to turn on resitive loads to keep it above 25%.

 

[Ratch]

It should be noted that sometimes the power goes out for no explicable reason at all. The weather could be fine, economy good, but a squirrel blew the fuse at the end of the road (it's happened to me several times).

Moments like those, I still need the pool filter to run, water heater to finish the laundry, stove to make dinner, or pump and heat to take a shower, and AC because it's 95 degrees out. We blew the line fuse last thanksgiving day in perfect weather, with a power company on skeleton holiday crew. No way the defrosted and prepped turkey, and the rest of the fixings were going in the trash...
So the mindset of sacrificing ac or other luxuries doesn't always work when the rest of the world doesn't have an outage or see a reason for one.

 

[Isaac-1]

Year before last we had a similar thanksgiving day incident, power went off during thanksgiving dinner for no reason for about 15-20 minutes. If it had lasted longer or happened a couple of hours earlier we would have switched over to generator power, as it was we had plenty of natural light to continue eating. On a side note regarding crazy incidents, we had one in the small town of about 10,000 people where I live about a decade ago, one Saturday afternoon something blew on one of the transformers at the substation that feeds much of the town causing every pole top transformer to pop its safety breaker. It only took the power company a couple of hours to roll in a backup transformer at the substation, but they then spent 2 days going up and down every street in town resetting all the pole top breakers. I was one of the lucky ones they got around to resetting my pole top transformer about 6 hours after the initial power outage.

 

[m109a2]

Are we through yet?Al

 

[rustystud]

Are we through yet?Al

Through with what ?