Monday December 16th Café.

We were without power for about 6-7 hours on Saturday due to someone driving into a power pole and it started me thinking about buying a backup generator. I started looking at the various types available. The big replace whole house jobs are attractive but out of my budget at least for now but the hunt continues for a lesser model.
 
St-Gerard said:
Mine is a LordCo supplied ,9000w don't remember the brand , made a wiring harnes to plug into the dryer outlet or stove. Just have to turn off main breaker first,"very important" . Forgot gen cost $700
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The dryer / stove hookup is called a widow maker. Very dangerous for you and the possibly people working on the downed power lines. I'm sure you know this already.

Just tossing it out there for someone who's new to it all, who doesn't know and thinks they'll just do this as it's cheaper and quick.

The proper way is to use some type of interlock device or transfer switch, so there's absolutely no chance you'll send power back out to the pole, and you won't electrocute yourself with a
male-male hookup cable.
 
Obo said:
Very dangerous for you and the possibly people working on the downed power lines.
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And illegal everywhere in Canada, and the states as well I believe. Have seen a few local news reports over the years of people who were fined as their illegal hook-up was discovered when work to restore power was going on.
 
Agreed, only use it if Bc hydro says power goes out for a day or longer. Am looking at getting a switching device , but I'm in a rental property so kind of a pain to get permission and get the landlord to cover the cost. Checked my main breaker and yes it totally disconnects from the grid. Most of the time our power outages last three hours , so not worth the effort.
 
We used to have relatively frequent power outages, because the local power company was way behind on tree trimming and wire maintenance. After a derecho, we were off the grid for four days. They've done a ton of work since then to get caught up, with the result that things are much more stable and reliable now than they had been for a while.

We've considered a big, permanent backup gennie but overall the cost doesn't justify the benefit to us. They run to the thousands of dollars to purchase and install, plus there's monthly and annual maintenance and upkeep. The cost of replacing a refrigerator full of food every few years is far lower than the initial and ongoing cost of being able to keep the lights, computers, and television on during widely-scattered, infrequent, relatively short-duration outages.
 
ibike2havefun said:
The cost of replacing a refrigerator full of food every few years is far lower than the initial and ongoing cost of being able to keep the lights, computers, and television on during widely-scattered, infrequent, relatively short-duration outages.
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Up here, the main concerns are the Winter time outages. No heat and no water (we're on wells) are the main concerns. You can put your food outside to keep it cold / frozen. :)
 
ibike2havefun said:
We've considered a big, permanent backup gennie but overall the cost doesn't justify the benefit to us. They run to the thousands of dollars to purchase and install, plus there's monthly and annual maintenance and upkeep. The cost of replacing a refrigerator full of food every few years is far lower than the initial and ongoing cost of being able to keep the lights, computers, and television on during widely-scattered, infrequent, relatively short-duration outages.
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Same train of thoughts over here...
GF and I each ended up with propane/gasoline camping stoves, emergency FM receivers and lights (both with USB charger & crank-dynamos), some massive power-banks (big enough to i.e. power the bread maker at least 4 times and then some) and solar panels to recharge for each residence...

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Obo said:
Up here, the main concerns are the Winter time outages. No heat ......
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Definitely the main concern. There is an area in Montreal that has been without power for four days now. This affects about 100,000 people and the temperature are about to drop to way below zero for the next several days. Because of this yesterday Hydro-Quebec brought in several huge industrial generators, the ones that are the size of shipping containers. They parked them on the street in various locations and connected them up to get electricity back to these people. They did this because they can't find the failure so they can't estimate when the power will be restored. It is in an area that has an underground electrical. Out of desperation, because they can not find the cause of the failure, they began replacing the underground cables one section at a time and they still can't get the power to come back on. Hydro-Quebec is usually very good at what they do, so this is certainly strange. I bet that there are more than a few businesses and residences in that area that will be looking in to generators.
 
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