[Shop-talk] Standby Generators

[w]

On 12/27/2013 7:04 PM, James Stone wrote:
> I would like to set up a relatively inexpensive standby generator for my
> vacation home.  The house uses propane for heat, hot water and cooking, so the
> logical thing to do would be to get a propane powered generator or convert one

Just had a 20 KW Generac propane installed last month at a relative's 
home, impetus being a terminally ill resident with need of power for 
life support equipment in a long term outage.

Very nice, apparently high quality unit with a 1L V-twin engine and 
fancy electronics. Supposed to be able to hold up a whole 200 amp 
service panel. But it was $8,100 installed. I found the unit online for 
$4500 if you're hard core DIY (oh, wait, that's why we're here!) but was 
beyond me and a difficult install in this location and not an 
unreasonable installation charge and margin on it.
(see: http://www.electricgeneratorsdirect.com )

Seeing it, I'm not sure you could go a whole lot cheaper. They make 
smaller ones and have the option to have some kinda switch to drop 
individual high-load non-essential circuits like the AC. But they 
weren't all that much cheaper. Little ones might work for emergencies 
where you can manually intervene, but for a totally unattended 
application I'm thinking you have to pony up for something more.

-w