Posted: 11/15/2012 8:39:17 PM EDT
|
I expect a fair portion of those reading this will have back-up power arrangements for their home and or business.
My question is "How long can you maintain your basic electrical energy needs, without re-supply?" . . In my case, the house runs from a battery + inverter + PV system. Battery bank will run house for at least 5 days with no sun. Each day of full sun will leave 2 days energy reserve in batteries. In absence of good SUN, about 5 hours of generator run time per day will give surplus charge to batteries, using about one gallon of gasoline. so TWO barrels of gasoline should easily keep me going for over a year. |
|
I am running on my winter plan right now so if the power goes out I swap to alternatives for the most part. Can go a month or so I expect. Kind of depends on how much the vehicle needs to run around and if it will cut into my fuel storage or not. Do the question in summer when it is hot and nasty and I have to be at work and it would get cut in half and be about 2 weeks or so. TJ will mention I tend to skip cutting corners at times and just cut whole ends off the rectangle so what works for me may not work for others. |
|
Right I don't know.
maybe a week. I am off next week and working on a power shed, somewhere to store generator and run it with out having to move it. I am planning on restocking fuel next week when I am off work. Looking at maybe adding a couple more batteries. Solar I don't think right now is a good option for me with the limited amount of light we have here. think we average 4-5 hrs a day. need to search the forum for set ups. |
|
My generators will be used to maintain my freezers and refrigerators until we have consumed the food.
After that the fuel is for emergency driving and chainsaws, rototillers etc. We plan on going (almost) 19th century. Springs, outhouse, gardening and kerosene and other essentials. |
|
A few years ago I built a modest (440Ah) battery bank with a Xantrex inverter/charger. The intention was to eliminate my nighttime noise footprint, as well as conserve my stored fuel. Two of my gensets have tri-fuel conversions, and I run them primarily on propane. My propane stockpile is enough for 240+/- hours of operation, and if I get draconian those 240 hours would give me sixty days of run-time. That's based on four hours per day to charge the battery bank, run the furnace and hot water blower motors, keep the fridge cold etc. During the coldest winter months I can add an additional 220Ah worth of capacity to the bank to make up for increased furnace usage. I also have a little over 30 gallons of gasoline stored that the gensets could use if needed, but I've mentally earmarked that for vehicles and loaning to neighbors for their own generators.
During the recent outage from Sandy, I ran the propane-powered eu2000i for around eight hours per day, purely for the sake of creature comforts for my family-television, DVD, Internet, computers, microwave etc. Those devices fit squarely into the "luxury" category, but family harmony was well worth the few extra pounds of propane. If it started to look like grid power was going to be down for more than a few days I would have gone into max conservation mode  Posted Via AR15.Com Mobile |
|
I plan on one week no rationing. With rationing, of course, that would be much longer.
Of the two "no services" major events I've lived through, one hurricane in TX and blizzard here in TN, one week seemed to be about when things started coming back., Going primitive, lanterns, battery stuff, I could probably go months. It depends on the time of year really. Tj |
|
I'm currently set up for ~2 weeks in the winter, 1 week-ish in the summer. This includes all creature comforts minus the clothes drier. If i take out the water heater and AC in the summer, I can go significantly longer. Rationing and running a genset 4 hours on/ 4 hours off would greatly increase duration as well.
My plan is to get propane set up at my place and have a standby genset attached to that. I really want a good gas stove for the kitchen, so i'll be having to put some propane in anyway. With 400 lbs of propane, I've calculated 2 weeks of everything running full blast and over 3 months of rationing. |
| I've endured the last 50 years on the central Gulf coast of Florida, especially the storm laden 04/05 hurricane season without a generator... though I now have one.. .a lot depends on the amount of perishable food you have stored, and your eating habits...I'm single, and like to cook soups and stews, and invariably have a couple of tupperware containers left over that I freeze... so I've got a refrigerator freezer and 5cu ft freezer full of non expensive food... at most $20 worth of frozen meats...I have probably 30 days of canned goods, so running the generator does not make economical sense after the first 4 hours...I'm retired, so running a window air conditioner was not the priority it was when I was working...I plan on continuing the use of the 5 day coolers for the more expensive meats... to use the frozen foods as a thermal mass...and run the generator after that just to charge batteries and protect the remaining more expensive food... |
|
We've had two hurricanes that knocked out power here. With Isabel, we had no power for 5 days (and we had power before lots of folks here, the average was about a week with that storm) and the whole region was powerless for some time. The one last year we only lost power for 2.5 days and it wasn't that widespread an outage. So, I've got fuel supplies for roughly a week for the one small and one large genset running most of the time. If I get smart about usage, I could stretch that to two weeks. OTOH, if the hurricane is going to be anything higher that a Cat 2, we are probably going to be bugging out. Isabel was a weak Cat 2 when it hit and we lost a couple of trees but no damage to the house simply because the wind direction was blowing the trees away from the house rather than into it. Some of my neighbors were not so lucky. The one down the street had a <<massive>> pine come down and divided their house right down the middle. Ouch. Basically, if a Cat 5 storm is coming, we're out of here. A storm that strong hitting this area would cripple the region for a significant length of time, far longer than what I would want to deal with.
Luckily the power lines in the neighborhood are all underground. The feeder lines TO the neighborhood are all above, though. 
|
|
Quoted:
about 12 years so far, I made a simple 14v regulator that will switch 80 amps of 12v solar panels so I can run my inverters w/o batteries if needed, I don't see me not being able to replace replace batteries when the time comes tho. That's been my thought as well, but haven't done it. |
|
Quoted:
Quoted:
about 12 years so far, I made a simple 14v regulator that will switch 80 amps of 12v solar panels so I can run my inverters w/o batteries if needed, I don't see me not being able to replace replace batteries when the time comes tho. That's been my thought as well, but haven't done it. Most inverters don't fair too well connected this way, since panels are effectively current sources, not voltage sources. If you stay well below your supply, you can probably make this work, but batteries help prevent dropouts when you hit a temporary cloud. |
|
Not withstanding short term outages. I burn about 1/2 gal an hour to keep the Mrs working from home full bore about a gallon an hour,
Long term 3 hours a day to pump water keep the freezers down and the battery's up. If I have a full tank of lp about a year and then some, calculator says 533 days. That is just LP. I also have small portable gas option and huge PTO diesel option with much less fuel for either. |
| That depends...We have a Honda EU3000iS with a tri-fuel conversion kit installed. IF the natural gas pipeline doesn't go down then we have an unlimited supply. If it the NG pipeline bites the dust then we have one month worth of fuel...but that is going to change here quite shortly because we're going to purchase a couple more 20lb LP tanks. |
|
For SHTF, we plan on going 19th Century as well. Once the cistern and wood stove are completed next year, we are GTG. For modern living, and because I have an internet based business I run from home, 2 weeks running. Need to increase that with solar/wind power generation. Its either sunny here, or cloudy and windy.
|
|
I can keep my furnace, fridge, and lights running in my house for a couple weeks w/ just the 20 gallons of gas I have on hand by budgeting my genny time and switching to a kero heater at night. I just have a UPS at my biz to keep the alarm system on  If the power goes out, I'm closing up shop. Speed |
|
Here's one way to look at it:
1 gallon of gasoline = 5 KWH* 1 gallon of diesel = 10 KWH** 1 100 watt solar panel = 3,000 KWH*** *Typical gasoline generator consumption is 0.2 gallons per hour, per KW. **Typical diesel generator consumption is 0.1 gallons per hour, per KW. ***4 hours per average day of full sunlight, 20 year panel lifespan. |
|
one month on 50 gallons of gasoline used very sparingly (in my smallest genny)...with 70% of all electricity needs coming from the fridge's and freezer's.
150 watt solar panel and 60 watt micro wind turbine with two golf cart batteries in the camper will run/recharge all are 12v lights and nominal power using devices. We have dry camped for 10 days without ever dipping below 70% on the batteries, although, this was with full sun and a good breeze at night. All the food was either canned, dried or used up before the ice melted in the cooler (& cooked with propane/charcoal)....something to consider, regarding refrigeration energy consumption. I need more solar panels, a bigger battery bank and a nice 12v freezer before I can comfortably say I am not worried about loosing all the perishable foods in the fridge/freezer. keeping up with the fridge/freezer schedule on a genny gets very old....did it for 15 days straight during hurricane Wilma back in 2005. |
|
Quoted:
I plan on one week no rationing. With rationing, of course, that would be much longer. Of the two "no services" major events I've lived through, one hurricane in TX and blizzard here in TN, one week seemed to be about when things started coming back., Going primitive, lanterns, battery stuff, I could probably go months. It depends on the time of year really. Tj This. I can run just the Fridge for about a month an a half (this assumes that I am not fueling the cars from that same stockpile, of course...) which is way more time than the food in it would hold out. Add in the Window-shaker that's all-but-required here in the summer, and that drops to about a week. In the 16 years I've lived in Az, the longest power failure I've had was about 12 hours. However, we did have a gasoline pipe break, and there was a serious gas shortage. So I'm prepped for about 2 weeks of driving fuel, in addition to whatever's in the tanks (about 1/2 the year the Jeep is more-or-less parked with a full tank, so that buys me another week even if the DD is on empty) |
|
One week running everything full bore.
One month rationing and being careful (generator only gets turned on to cool down the freezer and to run the deep well pump) but this greatly depends on how much gas I would have to use for the vehicle/ atv etc. I probably would not use all my gas to go the one month with electricity rationing and use everything in the fridge and freezer first (food wise.) I would want to keep at least half of my gas supply set aside for the chainsaws for firewood and emergency use of vehicle & ATV. I have about 20~30 gallons on hand at any given time, of course I am down to 15 right now as I just filled up the snowmobiles for the winter. I also try to never let the vehicle go below half tank and the ATVs are always topped off to. |
|
Using the tri-fuel Honda 2000 18 hours per day like I did during Sandy, approximately 10 days on propane. Using the CMD website estimate of 0.093 gallon of gasoline per hour at half load, I also have 30 gallons of gasoline, which is 322 hours or another 17 days. This doesn't count the propane hooked up to the BBQ, the gas in my second car or the gas in the back-up generator.
In real life I would likely need at least some of the gasoline for my primary car, and I would become more frugal if there was no resupply after my first 20 lb propane tank (so not running the generator for full 18 hour days). My informal goal is to be able to go 2 weeks without much trouble. |
|
If you have sun and are prepping for a long outage, solar is a bigger friend than some might imagine.
I think the $ inflection point of panels has about been reached and will slowly increase after this winter. The bigger ones are the best buy and having only a couple would be a big help is fuel runs short. |
|
Quoted:
I can keep my furnace, fridge, and lights running in my house for a couple weeks w/ just the 20 gallons of gas I have on hand by budgeting my genny time and switching to a kero heater at night i'm in this camp as well... http://www.ar15.com/forums/t_10_17/661411_Sandy____12_days_without_power__what_worked__what_didn_t____.html&page=1 ar-jedi |