Did the same here. For just the pellet stove and appliances in the basement, we got an EU2200i Companion (has 30A L5 connector, just like my Generac 3500XL). Have a 10kW genset for the big stuff, but most outages here last 12 hours. The Honda is set up with 6 gallon fuel system fron eBay seller brucejonh who is in Terrabon and makes top notch stuff. Very high quality. Can be done much cheaper, but this fuel setup can handle weather and accidental impacts.
Do you know the run time on that setup? I have a Yamaha EF2000is (not a POS Costco Yamaha) and have considered that same setup. In the ice storm we were getting about 8 hours out of the onboard tank and it really sucked getting up in the middle of the night to refuel.
Why were you running the genset in the middle of the night?
Pellet stove and meat in the freezer. I was actually at work for five straight days but my wife was keeping the family warm.
A good freezer should keep frozen items frozen for more than 10 hours in my experience. The whole turkey I had in the bottom of my freezer stayed frozen for 4-5 days.
I understand but when I've got around $4k worth of meat in the freezer I'm not taking any chances, not for the few bucks in fuel I'd save. Plus, happy wife=happy life, keep her warm and she'll return the favor-at least I hope someday, LOL. I'm certain the freezer we have would be fine even in the summer for a day or two without risk but, I quit gambling in my twenties. Our house on the other hand, is very open with lots of windows for the view and will lose heat fairly rapidly.
Once you make the switch, you'll wonder why you waited so long. Only recommendation would be but a quality stove, but once and cry once.
I don't care who your are, that's funny right there!!!
It's impossible to get 100% off the grid with solar. Average house uses 30kw a day solar 25k system takes up a lot of space. Winter time In oregon solar will be knocked down to 30% efficiency. You have to buy a lot of batteries for back up and turn your power off most days. $50k later still won't be enough in the winter. I work on a lot of private homes with people that have had solar panels installed and they all have back up generators after the first year of trying solar back up.
How well does the sun penetrate two inches of ice? Here's a pic from day one of the ice storm. I think you'd be out of power just like the rest of us, unless you had a generator.
Yep-same ice storm we were in- half the trees on our property came crashing down and were without power for several weeks. I have two backup generators- funny thing though- in my area both the propane and gas sold out. I have enough stocked that we were fine, but know of others that ran out. The point of the battery systems is that we have enough electricity stored to run the essentials for many days, even without sun. Worst case, if several days later the batteries run low and no sun, then will pull out the generators to recharge the batteries. FYI in case you didn't check out the link, we are not talking about a tiny little battery here, we are talking about something with similar storage to a Tesla powerwall. Power for days . . .
Good to have options for sure. I'm not about to drop big coin on solar yet as it is not yet viable without subsidies of any kind. I've seen several battery bank designs and they are great, but are a diminishing return type of thing. Generators are easily maintained and small parts can be replace but what happens when the big battery bank needs replaced? Most will just switch it off, return their home to the grid, and then forget it was ever installed. I've seen this too many times over the years to even consider it anything other than a hobby. I love my hobbies and always spend way too much on them, just as this technology is still at a hobby level, IN MY OPINION, not tying to start anything, just what I've seen over and over again from actual users.
Geezeritis was trying to invade my own private space. I finally bought a dandy electric DR inertial wood splitter.
Yeah I agree- i was super nervous in making such a big investment, and have been patiently waiting for several years before pulling the trigger finally. The advancement in battery tech to the newer LiFePO4 batteries finally got me to the point of seeing the value- these are supposed to be good for 3000 cycles to 80%, 6000 cycles to 50%. So should last 10+ years, which by then I am sure something newer and even better will be available, like the new Sodium Ion tech coming out . . . wanted a modular system like this so if one battery were to fail, could swap out. Of course, back to the OP's topic at hand, if all you are looking to do is run a pellet stove, this system is way overkill, could get something much smaller/cheaper that could run it for multiple days, as my pellet stove once it gets up and running only pulls about 70 watts, very efficient . . .
Keep in mind the bags weigh 40lbs. If you can do what we did and build a nice pellet storage box next to the stove with a flip up lid. You can easily bulk fill the box then use a feed scoop to move the pellets to the hopper on the stove. The box I made holds about 11 bags so only needs to be filled once every 9-10 days. We for the majority of heating season get about 28 hours from a bag. In the dead of winter temps below 30 we get about 24 hours a bag. We clean our Kozi 100 stove about every 10 days when we fill the storage bin.
