It’s going to get worse. I have an electrician coming in this week to rewire (within code) my home power panel to allow me to power my house from an external power source. I have a generator with a 50 amp 14-50R connector. It’s dirty power but it will run my lights, refrigerator and AC. I have little 2800 watt inverter for the the 4 PCs in the house. Only one is essential (the one I’m using, suck it my boys!)
Not sure where you are. But I did mine myself. I went the interlock route versus a transfer switch. The interlock was under $50 and an easy install on the breaker box. On the generator inlet, get a good brand. I went with a 50 amp inlet.
Got a 12500 watt Westinghouse generator. Dual fuel. Grabbed a 100lb propane tank and got it filled. It will last days if needed. Gen is filled with gas for a short run if needed. Feels good to have a backup solution in place. Still will need gas or propane but it’s better than what most have. Only so much prepping you can do unless you are in the country.
I looked into that, researched both a transfer switch or an interlock switch. I realized I could do either myself. However, there are some issues with my Panel that I can't correct. I need to have the city power come and correct it first before I can do the mods. Thats when I decided to call in an electrician and see what they have to say. They said the best solution was to install a sub-panel, move my circuit breakers into there and rewire my old panel. In the end I will have a new circuit breaker panel with a generator interlock switch, two watt meters (one for each 120v Rail,) and an alarm to let me know if City power has been restored and all this work will be up to code with a filed city permit so my house value is not impacted. Much better than I could have done myself. The only delay is getting the sub-panel, apparently a lot of homeowners in my region are doing the same thing and the parts are in short supply due to demand. My electrician just informed me that the parts are here and the install will happen next week.
Nice. You will be glad it’s done. I hate messing around within the panel much but my electrician was too busy to help and we had already lost power twice in the past month.
Maybe look into wood gasification to power some used old generators. If you have enough wood, it could be a good source of electricity.
2800 watt inverter for the the 4 PCs in the house
Laptop.
This is silly but I took it a step further. I have two linear 35 amp dc power supplies. So, in the event of a power failure I plug the DC power supply into the generator and then use a 400 watt dc to ac inverter plugged into my desktop PCs. It’s very inefficient but by the time the power gets to the PC it’s a stable and clean sine wave. I thought I could do the same thing with an APC UPC but those things are so sensitive; if the sine wave is a just a little bit off 60Hz it just shuts down.
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