Whoa! You guys are great!
Tugboat: I had seen a couple antique one lung Lister vids, but I was unaware that there was any current production. My research had turned up a few marine designs like the Marathon LIMA SER 1200rpm head that looks an order of magnitude more solid than most (if you are thinking about being in a isolated situation w no help coming). Great link! Will dig into that!
3DDave: Nailed it. The TX debacle was a predictable, 75% self inflicted cluster. Freeze offs are a national affair every year and the need for field workers to thaw them is never going away, but gas utility mgmt has fired experienced field and eng workers below the labor level needed to reliably run the plant and are not developing replacements. That’s systemic nationwide and total recipe for flippin’ disaster. ALSO, pipes are installing ‘electric’ compressor stations. I used to work for a pipeline many moons ago and I remember the ruckus when mgmt twisted a few electrics on the comp engineers after some marketing boys took the top dogs to the Masters Tourney in Pittsburgh. Talk about chain sawing the wrong side if the limb you are sitting on LOL!
What could possibly go wrong when rolling blackouts choke off gas flowing to natgas fired electric generation stations???
Who could have seen that coming?
I’ll rant-off for now, but one thing you can take to the bank is that parachuted-in corp managers that couldn’t qualify to work for a day in the field are going to freeze and starve many, many more people to death than died in Texas before the negative feedback blowback takes them out.
One of the local guys I met is USAF ret out of the San Diego complex and he bought a 200ac mountain 25 miles deeper in the exurbs than I am. He threw in one of those standby 15kw whole house packages on a pad outside his new quarters. A yr later he had a pc board go bad and it took two months to get it in. A pic he sent me had a dozen surface mounted chips that made it darn near impossible to timely self-repair even if you had all the info, test eq, skills and parts. He casually noted that these would be the first thing cooked in the event of an EMP in advance of a war. Interesting point from a MIC wig that easily could afford to live in any high end gated community in the country.
Your suggestion on batts/inverter is definitely on the table. Our thinking was to add a 24/7 2-4kw DC pony engine/gen floating the batts AND driving the inverter so as to carry 85-90% of his KwH monthly energy requirement without a 10Kw noising up the grounds, wasting fuel, etc. With the batts essentially only for peak catching and gen fails, noise, battery cycles and depth of discharge issues about disappear for the most part an will at least double or triple batt life. Need more info/experience to finesse the battery trade offs.
Inverter reliability/repairability is still an big issue. Throwing a bunch of money at spares probably will be his solution.
Would be interested to hear any inverter mfgr experiences anyone will offer up!
3D/LittleInch: Timing-most of the folks I talk with have a time horizon of short term, weather related power outages, but the number of those seeing a degree of risk of outages lasting months or even years (including me) is growing. Especially see that in newer expats that have moved here in the last couple yr. And, as the old man of the extended family, if things go worst case wrong, I’ll have 9 looking to me for a solution. Freezing grandkids isn’t an option for me.
Here is our energy equation. Up on the Cumberland Plateau we are 80% clouded over Dec-Apr. The cost of extra panels, batts and driving down consumption to where the missus revolts makes solar uncompetitive with alternatives.
Propane is a solid tech solution, but today it is about 1/3 more expensive than resistance heat from the grid. Burying a 1kgal tank opens the smart opportunity to top off when prices drop. It’s a great standby solution for most people, given there is no supply chain issues getting into the state since there is essentially zero production here.
NatGas locally comes from two sources. Interstate pipes and local production. Local production is very attractive for those willing to dig a little deeper into it.
Thanks for all the info! I appreciate the thinking and suggestions!!!
Best regards,
B
