The recent electrical power failure in Nova Scotia gives me an opportunity to pass on some hard-earned tips about portable electric generators.
First, I think anyone whose comfort and well-being rest on the belief that we are served by uninterrupted, reliable electrical power, is very optimistic. Face it: Nova Scotia Power is a privatised power utility, focused on profits, cutting down on long-term investment such as trimming tree branches that short out power lines in a storm. NSP has reduced the size of maintenance crews to maximize quarterly shareholder dividends. A recent newspaper article says many linemen own generators. Perhaps they know something.
Even at $1,000 to $2,000, a generator is not hard to justify when you consider the potential damage from a protracted outage: water pipes cracked from freezing; water damage when the pipes thaw; spoiled food in decongealing freezers & fridges; the demoralising loss of comfort & well-being; a sense of vulnerability and helplessness.
OK, so you’ve decided to protect your family and buy a generator. Canadian Tire is selling some real cheap units: under $1,000 for 5000 watts. Why spend $1,900 on a 2500–watt Honda?
First, how much power do you need? Let’s assume you want to power your furnace so you can heat your house. Well, my oil-fired, hot-water furnace draws 1200 watts @ 120 volts. An electric blanket is 180 watts; electric frying pan: 1000 watts.
If your home is heated electrically, well you’re screwed. Better make sure you have a wood stove, or a kerosene burner (which are great to have in any case). If you have oil-fired forced air, the fan is probably 240 volts, plus you need to power the oil pump and transformer. Check your owner’s manual, or measure the draw by using a wattmeter. I use an old 110-volt power meter I found in a scrap yard.
An electric motor sucks a lot of amps when it starts up, so your generator should be at least double the rating of the furnace.
I found this out the hard way when I connected my “3500–watt” Coleman generator to my furnace. Imagine my discomfiture when the furnace sputtered, popped a breaker, and the generator was brought to its knees.
It turns out that 3500 was the total wattage across two outlets. Each individual outlet was half that, or 1750 watts, far too inadequate for the start-up gluttony of the electric motor.
I sold the Coleman, and bought a Honda from Action Cycle in Elmsdale. The 2500–watt Honda puts out full power on one single outlet, more than enough to run my furnace.
Nasty surprise #2: a toy like the Coleman has a 40% duty cycle, meaning if you operate it for 2 hours, you must let it rest for three. The Honda is designed for 24/7, non-stop operation.
Nasty surprise #3: In the fine print of the owner’s manual, you are informed that the Coleman has a total operating life of... 250 hours! That’s right, it falls apart after 250 hours of operation. It’s a throw-away appliance (like the Apple iPod). Hondas are used by construction crews on job sites, and last for a long, long time.
My greatest discomfort during the last outage was not being able to get in a shower. If you have an electric hot water tank (typically 5000 watts @ 240 volts), you will need a big, expensive generator. Your best bet (if you have a hot water furnace) is to get a hot water tank that connects to your furnace, and gets heated like a room.
More generator tips: keep plenty of spare gasoline in jerry cans. Store the gasoline in a garden shed, never in the house. Apparently gas goes stale, so every month transfer some of it from a container and into your car, and refill the container with fresh gas. Come spring, dump it all in your car, or use it in the lawnmower.
Make sure your generator is grounded by connecting it to a piece of rebar hammered in the ground. Change the oil in a new generator after 20 hours (or whatever the manual says). Little metal shards, left over from the manufacturing, are destroying its innards.
A 12–volt circuit is a nice feature on a generator. You can charge your car battery. Get an inverter from Canadian Tire (450 watts, $45). An inverter converts 12 volts DC to 120 AC, and can be used for light appliances, the radio, the fish tank, Nintendo, microwave, etc.
My strategy is to operate the generator on an eight-hour cycle. Run it for an hour, enough to the heat the house. Run it some more to cool the freezer, charge the car battery. Then turn it off to preserve gas, or bring it to a neighbour’s house. In between, the inverter can be used as a quiet source of power.
If you live in an apartment building and you have a balcony, you might consider a little 1000–watt unit, enough to power a small hot plate or an electric blanket.
Some experts say that Global Warning is causing storms of increasing intensity. Juans and collapsed power lines will be more frequent. Be prepared.
Moral is: you don’t get what you don’t pay for.