Quality Standby Generator for Residential

Merry Christmas
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I’m on the very end of a Duke feeder. Happens occasionally..
tired of pulling out the standby generator.
 
5-6 times a year.

Some times 5 days or more.

Very rural area.

Last place they get to when they start repairing downed poles.

Electric is the only grid here at the ranch. Private water, sewer, roads, no phones. (y)

Besides, we use generators on an daily basis for remote areas on the ranch, Ag wells, etc.
 
oldsparky52 said:
How often do y'all experience power outages and how long do they last? My last one was a few months ago when a hurricane came near and it lasted 9 hours from about midnight to 9AM. The one before was a hurricane that sat on us for a couple of days and we were out for about 5 days. Before that one was quite a few years ago and short duration. I don't remember an outage from a non storm event.
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Up here in NW WI the POCO we have were we do most of our work is known for there outages, maybe once a month or so on clear days. Seams like every storm too. It’s a co-op POCO. Every Tuesday around 10 am all our generator’s exercise, so when we are working around the lake we know it’s break time!


“ shoot low boys their riding shetland ponies”
 
We lose power 2-4 times a year, usually around 4 hours, but has been as long as a week. About 15 people on our line, so it’s low priority for the poco during major storms. It’s not been as bad lately, as the poco added another phase where the line splits off in another direction just before my house. That line usually gets the most trees falling on it.
 
rnatalie said:
Depends on the Generac. There smaller units come from a different line (that they acquired).

I have had an 80 KW Generac in operation since 2008 on my house. It's been trouble free. 90% of the maintenance is easily done (oil changes and coolant changes are trivial the way they installed the drains). Getting the "car" battery out when that needs to be replaced is a little challenging but not hard. The only real stupidity in the design is that the cooling fan belts are not installed behind one of the readily openable panels. You have to remove a dozen screws to get to it.

I put a Raspberry Pi monitoring box on mine because the alarm is a rather feeble sonalert that I can't hear unless I'm right next to the thing. The one warning is that the later controllers Generac has taken to encrypting the MODBUS port, so the open source monitors won't work. You'll be beholdedn to Generacs remote monitor service.
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Jesus that’s a large generator for your home.


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I was working on the EMS alarms on a 150 last week that was pretty darn quiet, 1800 rpm 277/480 volt gas. Just right outside the electrical room, had to look at the transferswitch displays to see if it was running! Normally you can hear them screaming from the inside. It had an alarm though that I’ve never seen before, something about “noise level”
 
I installed a 20kW Millbank genny and transfer switch at my folks' house about three years ago. Very solid and I suspect it has a lot to do with it having a Briggs & Straton engine. Maintenance on it (oil and filter changes) are a breeze. My parents love it; their power has gone out several times for extended periods, and with the genny they still have well water and heat/AC.


SceneryDriver
 
I put in a Kohler 20 kW at our cabin recently. Propane, and I will soon be installing a propane heater (kerosene heater that came w/ the place finally went belly up). Runs well, but the instructions on interconnecting the transfer switch to the generator were a little weak.

With this, and I expect all the small 3600 rpm generators, you aren't supposed to let them just run without limit. Every 8 hours or so you are supposed to shut them down and check the oil. Also we shut if off at night so the neighbors don't have to listen to it (and it seems pretty stupid to run a 20 kW generator for a 7 watt night light and a few parasitic loads we don't need at night).
 
SceneryDriver said:
I installed a 20kW Millbank genny and transfer switch at my folks' house about three years ago. Very solid and I suspect it has a lot to do with it having a Briggs & Straton engine. Maintenance on it (oil and filter changes) are a breeze. My parents love it; their power has gone out several times for extended periods, and with the genny they still have well water and heat/AC.


SceneryDriver
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The Milbanks are made by Briggs, but milbank is out of the generator business now


“ shoot low boys their riding shetland ponies”
 
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