A few weeks ago my business partner, and I were having a business dinner with a close friend, and strategic partner of ours, and the subject of home generators came up. Both my partner, and our friend had some impressive set ups in their homes. They were surprised to find out I had no such set up. Not for lack of wanting one, but rather because I actually didn’t really need one. Let me elaborate some. My home is on a North, South exposure, and in my second floor living room I have such a great cross ventilation I don’t really worry about cooling all that much. Most people I know that have generators in their home use them for cooling their homes. This can be an expensive process for a few days considering the cost of fuel. So in my position the only thing I would realistically use it for would be to save the perishables in my fridge, and maybe run some lights and possibly some fans. Definitely not something I’d want to make a big investment for. Really, why spend hundreds of dollars on gas to save less than a couple hundred dollars worth of food?
A smaller generator like a quiet Honda or Yamaha would be more along the lines of what might be useful to me. Still keeping large amounts of fuel in my townhouse is an impractical proposition. So perhaps a propane conversion may be perfect for my purposes? To be clear this would be a nice to have item I’ve toyed around with getting often, but when I put all the data on the table I’ve had to say no. Someday I may just yield to the impulse, and get one, but for now let me share some of my ideas in the selection process.
Generator selection is a challenging venture because like most preparedness efforts they should be tailored to the circumstances. For mine it would need to be a smaller portable unit since a bigger more robust unit would just be too much. We’ll use that example as the concept we’ll expand upon here. In a larger property where you can get separation from the unit itself noise becomes less of a concern. Note that liquid fuel generators, particularly diesel ones can get quite loud. This can be a nuisance or even an opsec concern. Storage of that fuel is an issue as well. Fumes, and fire hazards make storage a very important consideration. Gasoline powered generators are by far the most common, and very convenient if your car also runs on gasoline. You now have a great way to dispose of any unused generator fuel. Of course if your car runs on diesel perhaps a diesel generator is more apropos.
I my case a propane generator would make more sense. The fuel can be easily, and indefinitely stored in my place with little risk of fumes, or fire hazards. In fact I already have a bunch stored to use in my camping stoves, and heaters. It’s less efficient than liquid fuels, and the generators themselves seem to have lower engine lives, but remember its not something I’m planning on giving a lot of mileage to. They tend to run cleaner too if that is important to you. The concept of standardizing fuels is very important to me. It greatly reduces my need for storage and dramatically streamlines my preparedness practices. A 3 fuel generator may give me even more advantage allowing me to also use gasoline should the need arise even though I don’t plan on storing any.
The last type I’d like to discuss are natural gas powered generators. These types of units offer some interesting advantages. Natural gas is cheaper than most of the other fuels mentioned so far despite being more expensive, and less efficient than propane. It’s still cheaper than gasoline though. In my observation of my area those places that where already set up to run on natural gas had the least amount of disruptions. Our region is most vulnerable to hurricanes that don’t seem to disrupt underground natural gas lines as much. This may be very different in other regions such as earthquake country.
In closing let me just say that as you can see I am not against having generators, it’s just that in my situation it just really isn’t a priority. One thing I didn’t mention are those so called solar generators (they really aren’t generators) which might be more appropriate for people like me who don’t really need a generator but may want to charge devices and run lights during a crisis. Perhaps we’ll discuss these in a future treatment.
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