Battery backup or generator?

I had a bit of a minor freak out last night. Power flickered and went out at about 2am. Woke my wife up because some appliances beeped. Power was not restored until about 7:45 this morning. Sounds like the ice storm took out something for about 1200 homes around here. Luckily it was only 30 degrees out, and our house only dropped to 60 inside with no furnace fan. Earlier in the week it was negative degrees outside and our house would've cooled much quicker. This is the second power outage I've dealt with while living in IL (I've been here about 4 years), and the first, 4 years ago, was a 2-3 DAY outtage because a summer storm tore up a bunch of trees and power poles. 

Our house has two basement sumps and separate pumps, and we also have a sewage pit and pump for the downstairs basement bathroom.

The freakout was related to what the heck I was going to do if the power didn't come back on by tonight. A 2-3 day outage would cool our house enough that we would need to run the faucets to prevent pipe freeze. And then we would need to run the damn basement sewage pump to get the water out of the house. The problem would be exacerbated if it was actually cold outside. Add to that I travel frequently for work, and if this happened when I was not home my wife and two kids would be in a rough spot. We could always just go to a hotel, but I want to keep the house safe too.

Sooooooo. Do I get a natural gas generator for the whole house with an auto transfer switch? Isn't that like a 5-10k proposition? I know for the not sewage sump pits they make battery backup pumps in case of power outages in summer storms. But I need two, so that's quite a big cost if I'm going the generator route. Do they make something similar for sewage pumps (I'm sure they do)? Even if so, say each battery backup system is about $500, now I'm at $1500 in just protecting the pumps, not to mention the furnace fan.

I'm ok living without ac normal power appliances for a few days, but don't want to have a catastrophe in the house.

What about battery backup systems? I don't love the idea of another engine to maintain, and the cost seems really high. Is there something that could automatically switch on just the furnace and the power to the pumps that runs off a battery?

Sorry if rambling, didn't sleep well last night.

My brother put a natural gas generator set up his house when he built a couple of years ago.  It ws 17kw, I think, came with the breaker box and cutoff switch, and was under $8k Cdn.

As we were sitting in his warm, lit house eating and watching TV on the day after Christmas while everybody else was burning candles, I was having a pretty hard time figuring out why I didn't own one.

Sitting around in the dark gets you thinking, doesn't it?  I did that for 7 days once.  You really start figgerin' out what to do so you don't have to go through that again.

You can get a nice Honduh powered generator at Sam's Club for about one large.  It's 7KW run and 8KW "surge," whatever that is.  Pick up a whole house switch and wire that in at the pole.  Power goes out, kick on the generator, switch over to it, you're good to go.  That's what I did.  I also bought 500W of solar panels and my plan is to run a battery bank and a 2KW inverter, with a sub panel switch.  That way, I can have some lights at night when the generator is off.  I have everything I need except the batteries for that, just haven't got to it yet.

Oh, and since I put the generator in 10 years ago, we have been without power for maybe one hour. 

This reminds me that I need to clean the carb on my generator and I need to test my transfer switch operation. Better to try to understand it all while we still have heat. (New-to-us home)

In reply to Robbie :

nope!  Not really ( battery powered furnace back up)  while it can be done it’s not an easy button.  Plus there is the whole charging and maintaining thing.  It could sit unused for years and when you do need it the battery would be dead.  

If you go the natural gas generator route check places like Sams Club/ Costco/ Home Depot and Lowe’s.  Then call your natural gas supply and electric company.  The cool thing about the Later is they will simply add it to your utility bill for X amount per month. At various times I’ve seen thousands of dollars difference in costs between all of those suppliers.   6000 Watts will get you by if you are careful 10,000 Watts will let you be semi normal. 

Once you have those prices with installed  bids.  You can shop for a  1-2,000 watt portable generator  that will be many many thousands cheaper but first ask the wife if she feels OK with that option.  There the internet is your friend. Honda has a reputation for reliable but that still means some maintenance.  Oil and gas even with Stayble added is only OK for a few years. 

Being rural, we had no option for natural gas. So gas genie it was. We picked up a black friday special 10k peak generator from Sam's club for $400, bought a box with 4 (or 8) circuits to run important things like the well, fridge, freezer, wifi and wife's cpap as needed. Installed myself because I'm handy with wires and have used it a few times as needed. Always keep fresh fuel around, run it every few months to make sure it stays good etc. 

We've been looking into roof mounted wind generators and solar panels to augment this as well. 

In reply to Bobcougarzillameister :

Wind generators work anytime the wind blows fast enough.  The giant wind farm ones will work in a few mph breeze while the cheap alternator based ones Need  10-12 mph and an igniter source.  

Solar panels work during the day but not at night  good ones will produce on even cloudy overcast days  but not at night.  Wind blows anytime. Day or night.  

As a rule you cannot legally use a wind generator where it cannot fall down without hitting a building within 110% of its installed height.  On the other hand if you do have one that meets the rules you have a legal right to not only install it but have the utility company buy back your surplus energy at last years rate.  

Sad fact is the bigger the wind generator the faster the payback. Depending on average wind a giant one can have as little as a year and a half payback. While the small little ones will never pay back their costs.  

In reply to frenchyd :

believe me I know. Where we live we actually have to worry about overspeed here because too much wind. In the spring when the storms roll through 50-60mph winds are not uncommon for us. According to the wind charts, my littls swath of area sees an average of 14mph wind speeds year-round. With 3 300w powering a battery bank through the night as well as 10 200W solar panels for daytime use we could almost be off grid. At the very least we could use the genie as support for those as well. Just not ready to pull the trigger on that just yet. 

The original generator we were looking at was a 1.4Kw on a 90ft pole. It was somewhere around $20k plus install. It's been a few years but the main drawback was at wind speeds over 30mph it shut down. Well hell, that is most of the spring and fall for us. 

In reply to Bobcougarzillameister :

That could be some very valuable property. Like million dollar plus wind generator Valuable.   There are plenty of people with a big tax appetite who would love to put one there and reward you with a significant income  from the proceeds.  

My list of such people to contact is too far out of date  to be of any use but the market still exists

In reply to frenchyd :

The largest problem is the limited acreage I own (1.83) and the amount of trees on that 1.83ac of land. I've got one spot a tall mill could go, but that's it. 

We lost power some years ago in Cincinnati due to remnants of a gulf hurricane for five days.  No generators to be had at that time, but as soon as they started showing up in stores again I snagged a 7000 Watt Generac built Troy Bilt, plus a Reliance Electric 10 switch transfer panel with remote plug in outside my garage.  Worked at least five times since as our power is less than super reliable where I am.

Some years ago it was common to have a power outage in my area and I live in the greater Chicago area. Sun shining, no wind and the power goes out.  Due to the fact that in my area if we get rainy weather and a few days later an outage the water level in my sump will rise and may rise enough to over flow into the basement.

I have two sumps, one is perimeter drain and the other is laundry water. Both could overflow. 

What I did was purchase a 1500W inverter and a battery charger/maintainer and with a battery I already had I hooked up a sump pump  power back up.

You can plug in the sump pump into the inverter 24/7 and the charger keeps the battery fully charged for if and when the power goes out.

I also have a second battery kept charged in case power goes out for long enough to discharge the first battery.

Funny thing is since I installed this I haven't had a power outage lasting more then a few minutes! Go figure?

In reply to jimbbski :

Very interesting! That is kinda what I was thinking for a diy. I live in Chicago suburbs too so the sump issue is real for me as well. I wonder if I could do the same for the furnace fan...

In reply to Robbie :

If you want a bigger battery than the typical car battery look at Electric forklifts or stationary standby batteries  from industrial sources.  

Anything up to and including enough to run your house for months.  

Once you have a generator you never go back. I have a 9000 watt unit that easily powers my whole house. My nabor across the street has one as well. We are the only two in the naborhood. We get power outages at least one or twice a year that are for a day or three. Makes them non events to us. 

Those battery backup sump pumps are toys. They're only meant to run for a bit and they require you to install a second pump and checkvalve. My parent's house has them and we're constantly replacing batteries, controller boards, and pumps. The battery operated pump only runs for an hour or less before the battery is flat. It doesn't help that my parent's house has some kind of drainage problem that has the primary pumps running constantly, but regardless - do not depend on those battery operated pumps to get you through anything but the shortest power outages.

I made the mistake of buying a generator several years ago during an ice storm.  Big Briggs engine was so berkeleying loud that running it meant that people could hear it for well over a mile.  Refueling it was legit painful.  

Test whatever generator you get to make sure the noise is tolerable.

Also, test run it when installed for exhaust flow.  My idiot ex and her husband nearly killed my kids by carbon monoxide poisoning when their standby generator kicked on one night.

I'd love to find the least expensive way to do solar + battery back up.  Thankfully, my family got power in just over a week, whereas well over 1M are still without power- some for over 4 months.

alfadriver said:

I'd love to find the least expensive way to do solar + battery back up.  Thankfully, my family got power in just over a week, whereas well over 1M are still without power- some for over 4 months.

We all would.  

My brother and I talked to my sister and brother-in-law about getting a Generac backup when they bought their new house.  The response I got was "oh, we'll never need it."...since that day, they have had 2 outages from hurricanes, 1 from a series of bad thunderstorms, and 1 for some weird power company issue.  They've lived there 2 years and when I say "outage", I mean 24+ hours.  They are in FL, so they don't need it for heat, but it sure would be nice in the summer.  

Cheapest solar I've been able to come up with:

500W of panels at a buck a Watt plus shipping:

50 amp charge controller from HF

2-4KW HF inverter

welding cables inverter to batteries

golf cart 6V batteries

cables from panels to charge controller

SWAG it at a grand.

An inverter back up will depend a great deal on what you want to back up and how long you need it to run.  You can quickly come up with a berk-load of amp-hours which will equal a crap load of Lithium Ion batteries (high cost, but low maintenance, less space and long life) or a similar crap-load of AGM/lead acid batteries (inverse of the above, although still not cheap).   If you need to run any sort of decent motor loads, then the inrush will require a much higher inverter/battery capacity.

FWIW, when I design UPS systems for clients, motor loads are avoided at all costs.

Unless you can spend the money on something like a Tesla battery bank designed for the purpose, a generator of some type is generally a much cheaper option in both the purchase and running costs.

jmabarone said:

alfadriver said:

I'd love to find the least expensive way to do solar + battery back up.  Thankfully, my family got power in just over a week, whereas well over 1M are still without power- some for over 4 months.

We all would.  

 

My brother and I talked to my sister and brother-in-law about getting a Generac backup when they bought their new house.  The response I got was "oh, we'll never need it."...since that day, they have had 2 outages from hurricanes, 1 from a series of bad thunderstorms, and 1 for some weird power company issue.  They've lived there 2 years and when I say "outage", I mean 24+ hours.  They are in FL, so they don't need it for heat, but it sure would be nice in the summer.  

Based on my time in the Caribbean, they do need power for the heat.  A/C is really important, like there's no way I can sleep without it.

bumping this back up. I've had another scary night (we didn't lose power, but it rained very solidly here for 2-3 days straight and one basement sump was literally filling like if a garden hose was turned on into it). If we had lost power I would've had water in the basement in about 15-20 minutes by my estimation (the sump happens to be quite large in diameter).

I'm now looking at automatic natural gas generators. Not only do not want to have to ask my wife to go start a gasoline generator and plug it in and flip some breakers in the middle of the night when I am traveling for work, I really don't want to have to worry about the house anytime we are not home. Heck, a few nights ago we would've woken up to inches of water in our basement had the power gone out while we were sleeping and we didn't notice!

I don't need a big unit, and I am ok not running the whole house when we are on generator power. I just want the two 10 amp sumps to work and the heater blower fan. A few lights would be nice too.

Luckily, my gas meter is outside and is basically right where I would put the generator. The house electrical panel is also really close and I can get conduit to it from the outside location without tearing out any walls.

Anyone ever installed one on their own? What brands are good and what brands should I stay away from?

Because of the growth of solar and wind there is a lot of development happening in options for energy storage.  This is my wife's area of professional expertise.  Her company does battery control systems for residential use. Maybe I can get her to post something for those who are interested. 

In reply to Type Q :

That would be awesome.