" Yes, I am in a rural area that does experience outages sometimes 3-5 times a week, maybe for no more than a couple of hours, but last year , or year before last, the neighborhood was out for 1 week after the big storms came up from the gulf. I may not need hot water and furnace at the same time. I am trying to plan as best I can since this is new construction; if I do become disabled/ not able to cut wood anymore for wood heat is the reason I was wanting something big enough to run the furnace. Even at that, the wellpump, range, fridge and furnace would not be on at the same time; my goal was to be able to select the circuits manuallly, as well as start/stop/ exercise manually also. Thanks again for your input. If I do go w/ a portable, my application will be one that I can hook up to propane which I will have on site and builder will be able to set up the lines/wiring properly. I will visit the site you suggested also. Thanks again, " There is no surge to a hot water tank therefore if it has 2 x 3000 watt elements and your generator puts out 10,000 watts you now have 4000 watts to spare and you do not need to have power on it all the time to have some hot water. If you randomly select what you are going to run or operate you Will be surprised what you can do with a 5000 watt generator. Refrigerator's or freezer's do not have to run 24 hours a day to keep food. You do not absolutely need the electric stove oven or clothes dryer. You can get by with one or two stove burners on 120 V or a hot plate and microwave etc. etc. etc. No you can't run everything at the same time but you do not need to under emergency situations, you just want to be able to get by with some resemblance of normalcy and not have to abandon your home and property. The biggest problem is FUEL, which is why a dual or tri-fuel system is far better unless you want to store a 100 gallons of gasoline and such and that will only last but a few days depending on the power output of your generator.

My reply is based upon the following facts. 1. There is no connection from the local power grid to your cabin. 2. The person that originally wired this cabin, followed the standard practices of the trade and the work conforms to the electrical code, including.......proper grounding of all aspects of the system. 3. And that the existing wiring system in the cabin was set up to receive 120/240 volt AC grid power at some point in the future, if it became available. The way I see it, you have two choices. You can either use a "whole house" transfer switch that will allow you to choose between the existing solar power supply or the genset. OR...... you can simply disconnect the wires from the solar power supply and tape them off inside the main panel for your cabin (fuse box/breaker box). You don't need to actually remove the wire from the fuse box itself. This would allow you to easily reconnect the solar power supply system in the future, should the need arise. The purpose of a transfer switch is to provide 100% isolation between two differing sources of power. So, one way or the other, this isolation must take place. IF you don't isolate the solar system from the genset, then the genset will feed power back into the solar supply. Damage may be done but even if it does not do damage, the solar system is a potential loss of wattage from your genset and you could also have a fire and electrical hazard. Once you disconnect the wires from the solar supply unit, you can install the correct wiring between the fuse box and wherever you are placing the genset. If your panel is a standard residential fuse or circuit breaker panel, then it requires 240 volts plus a neutral wire to connect to the genset. You also need to make sure that all grounding issues are taken care of. Some how, your genset must be grounded to the cabin's system. If you are not sure of how to go about this, then hire a licensed electrician to perform the work. Better to be safe, than electrocuted. You also need to consider that many gensets use about a gallon of gasoline per hour of run-time. If it was me, I would be looking at a diesel genset so that I could install a lockable fuel oil tank in the 250 to 500 gallon size on the property. The thought of transporting several five gallon cans of gas in my car wouldn't thrill me. No matter how hard you try not to, you will spill fuel from those containers. Gasoline is a highly inflammable and explosive fuel. You don't want those fumes inside your vehicle. Having a permanent tank that is refueled by a company with a tank truck has many benefits. Plenty of reserve fuel that is far more stable than gas and no worries about refueling a hot engine.

Hi, I am actually quite surprised at the issues you are having with your generator. To me 57Hz to 60Hz is a small difference. To me it seems that you have something else amiss in your wiring of the generator. Computer power supplies are mostly switch mode these days and will be able to adjust to the slightly different frequency. The thing which makes me suspicious is your fan just buzzing. A fan is not like hi-tech, it is just a motor. Why would it start buzzing? It seems that you have something else out of wack here and not just a matter of frequency. If the frequncy was wrong, it would still spin be it slightly slower perhaps. Granted the current may be a little higher, but at 5% difference (57Hz to 60Hz) I think it should be fine. Does your fridge run O.K. as does your lighting? Lighting (vanilla light bulbs anyway) should be the least sensitive to differences in power frequency and up to a point voltage. I have a Cummins Onan generator and everything works just fine on it. My hunch is as follows: 1) 57Hz to 60Hz is a minor issue 2) Something else which is a bigger issue is not right here 3) My guess would be the way the Generator is hooked up to the house, or you may have a generator which is not what you think it is. What is the model of that generator? 4) When the electricians took readings, did they check readings at the computer power outlet? I am trying to reconcile that they took readings, and confirmed that everything was O.K., when you are having these issues. My hunch here is that they took readings at the generator, and those were correct. However they did not take readings at the power outlets to your computer etc. They did not do this because hooking up the house was causing all these issues and they did not want to damage anything. So they checked the readings at the generator only, without hooking it up to the house. 5) Worth getting I think a second opinion from another electrician who has experience in backup power systems. One often confused area is the switching of neutrals, and ground bonding. Backup power systems installs are sort of rare, so if this is your electrician's first time install, then he may have confused the generator hook up at the transfer switch and how the neutral should be handled and how the generator should or should not be bonded to ground. I have included a PDF link which explains the issue. It is sort of tehcnical, but it is important to get it right. Hope this helps, Warmest regards, Mike. Here is a link that might be useful: AC Power Hookup

LOL. Getting back to fuel, I do wonder about diesel. Wonderful engines etc and probably the go-to for commercial power backup but I wonder about the fuel life in terms of standing....it does go off after time, and I suspect the standby maintenance is bigger - and maintenance is something many probably don't factor into costs. I wonder if you can get the special diesel that doesn't include the road tax and is cheaper? The gas equivalent here in Canada is called "purple gas" but don't know if there's a diesel equivalent. If it was legal to do so and you were committed to having the tank topped off regularly, or had two tanks, I suppose you could, theoretically, have a diesel vehicle and use the fuel from tank A) when it was getting old, keeping tank B) full, then swap and use up tank B) - I believe you can have such fuel tested too. Reading the Costco fliers I thought the Natural gas gensets sounded appealing - no dangerous fuel storage, no old fuel to get rid of, but then you are reliant on the outside gas supply. I suppose propane beats this, but how long does IT keep?