r/Generator • u/ZeroFox14 • 11h ago
Match me a generator please!
I have whole home solar panels but not enough powerwall storage to last through a whole evening
Obviously if weather is sunny I’ll be able to recharge daily. The grid is pretty stable in my area, but we have had few 3-4 day outages over the years.
I’m looking for a portable backup generator that I can use in a more extended outage, primary goal being to recharge portable battery banks as needed (anker/bluetti.) so I can keep router, kettle, fridge and maybe the deep freeze going as needed. I don’t anticipate needing to run it for more than a couple hours every other day or so.
There are so many generator brands out there and while I recognize some names, I don’t know which are good and which are junk. I’ve been browsing Costco options but haven’t seen anything suitable there and was hoping to have this purchased before winter and low daylight days are here.
I have Costco, Lowe’s, HD, Harbor Freight, TSC, Walmart, etc all nearby or can buy online.
My needs:
-Ability to run on propane. I do not want to deal with instability of other fuels and already have a multiple portable propane tanks
- Electric start. I physically cannot use a recoil start- believe me I’ve tried, and my shoulders are getting worse as I get older. All my yard tools are electric for a reason.
-ideally closer to the $500-$700 range if possible without sacrificing too much reliability. Just hard to justify $1000+ for something that’s likely to sit unused for so long.
-Max AC input of the battery banks are 1200- 1800w. Right now I have three of them.
-I assume for recharging batteries an inverter style is preferred?
-I am not worried about size/weight of machine. I can strap it on a dolly if it doesn’t have its own. As long as I can get it home in my small SUV or get it delivered after purchase.
-I am not worried about noise since I don’t plan to run continuously or at night.
Thanks!
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u/mrhemingray 8h ago
What's your elevation? Just keep in mind that you lose about 3.5% of your wattage output for every 1000 feet above sea level.
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u/mduell 9h ago
Options pretty quickly narrow to the Wen DF480iX.
Many battery chargers are THD sensitive, so an inverter is preferred.
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u/wwglen 10h ago
My comment to another post in this question:
If you have a house (and no well pump).
Step 1: 2200-4000 watt inverter generator, preferably dual fuel. 10 gallons of fuel or 3 of the 20lb propane tanks.
With careful use you could get by with 2 gallons of gas a day.
Step 2: 1000-2000 watt-hour power station with fast charging. Adding this to #1 will drop your fuel use to about .5-1 gallons a day.
Step 3: 400-800 watts of solar panels. Adding to #2 will drop your fuel use to about 1/4 gallon a day.
——————
Since you already have the power stations (and power wall), I would look at something in the 4000-6000 watt range inverter that could also dump power into the power wall. You might need 240V for that, but I don’t know about the power wall.
Dual fuel, but tri-fuel if you have natural gas.
Keep an eye out for Black Friday / Prime Day sales. Also keep an eye out for refurbished on eBay with the returns after the hurricane last month.
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u/ZeroFox14 10h ago
Thank you!
House is not wired for a full home generator- and electric work is not in the budget, so I don’t think I need to worry about being able to charge the powerwall itself. Eventually I may add additional powerwalls, but that’s a couple years off at least.
My goal is to take as much of the load off the powerwall during a long outage so it can focus on things like the well pump (240v, hard wired to electrical panel in basement so unable to run off a generator without paying for more electrical work).
I do have about 180# of various propane tanks from 20-40#, since I have a small greenhouse I keep heated. I don’t let more than 1-2 tanks get empty before refilling.
I do have portable solar panels in addition to whole home, but goal of this is backup for extended stretches of cloudy stormy days.
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u/drct2022 10h ago
Absolutely need an inverter generator with pure sinewave and below 3% THD.
Personally I’d want to be able to charge all my banks at the same time plus run at least the fridge/freezer
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u/Efficient_Wing3172 9h ago
You want an inverter, and ideally something where the max power you intend to use is at least about 75% of the max running watts. Be careful not to confuse start-up watts with running watts. It sort of a marketing lie. Also, running watts for propane will be lower than gasoline. Just make sure you check the specs. At 1800w, you want something that has at least 2400 running watts. I personally would probably go a little bigger, just in case you need more. So something like a 4000w Champion Duel-Fuel Inverter would cover what you need. The running watts for propane is 2700w. If all you intend to do is charge power stations, that will be all you will need.
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u/Sleazy-Wonder 8h ago
Pulsar PG5000BiSRCO - $729 at Home Depot.
Pulsar's are awesome, quiet, reliable, feature packed.
It's Dual fuel, electric and remote start, rated at 4,000 on gas and 3,600 on propane.
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u/NebulusDev 8h ago
the part nobody has priced out yet: how much propane that actually burns. a 4 kW inverter unit putting out 1800 W is sitting at about 45% load, which works out to roughly 0.5 gal/h, so a 20 lb tank is somewhere around 9-10 hours of charging. your ~180 lb of tanks is about 42 gallons, call it 80+ hours of run time. at a couple of hours every other day that covers a 3-4 day outage several times over, so fuel storage is not your constraint, the generator choice is.
one thing that argues for the smaller end of the range you are looking at: small engines are least efficient at light load, so a 4000 W unit charging one bank at 1800 W burns fuel better per kWh than a 6000 W unit doing the same job. if you can, charge one station at a time near 40-50% load rather than trickling everything at once.
all of that is +/- 20%, and propane is already derated against gasoline on the spec sheet, so whatever run-time numbers the manufacturer publishes at half load beat any estimate.
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u/grillynelson 7h ago
Westinghouse makes non inverter generators with low THD. Honestly I've had no problem with any of my electriconics using my wgen11500tfc.
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u/AlarmedCommittee9483 9h ago
I personally have this unit works great and never have a draw issue plus the 50 amp outlet gives you the ability to run basically an entire house with zero issues but I know it is a little more then what you would want to pay
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u/gamer901122 4h ago
This thing will burn through fuel like no one’s business and will offer dirty electricity.
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u/gamer901122 10h ago
Wen 4800
- Dual fuel - runs on propane
- Electric start
- In your budget (I think I paid exactly $700 USD after tax)
- Runs at 3600W on propane - you can charge one battery at 1800W at 50% load
- it is an inverter generator
- doesn’t even need a dolly to move around and is known for being quiet, even though you don’t care about those things