That’s the old way of thinking. Generators do the job but they are costly to purchase, expensive to run (need fuel) and noisy as hell. A combination of solar and wind turbine would have been a better investment. JMHO
Well Rocky, I've had one of these generators for 16 years. The other is 16 years old but I acquired it this past summer for free. Here in the woods neither wind nor sunshine will work well. Trees block both. (ever been in deep East Texas?) Now, they'll work out on the coastal plains some but the investment would be at least 10 times what I have in all these generators. So, I got one generator for free (salvage) and it took about $200 bucks to replace a circuit board, carb cleanup, oil change with filter. I burned 7.5 gallons of gas. Gas at $2 /gal. So $215 invested. Even the generator on my well I spent $900 on it in 2005. Decent sized generators that are pretty good are available for $500.
Tell me what a windmill, solar panels, and batteries would cost plus the auto switch to sell my extra juice back putting it in the grid. Now I need to run A/C's or space heaters, water heater, fridge, freezer. lights and miscellaneous appliances. I run all of those off my generators.
I'll give you the noise but bigger units are available that are less than 60 decibels. Noise is a small inconvenience.
The rest of your claims don't add up . . . not even close. My costs are relatively cheap to live with the convenience delivered. The green methods you mention won't do that at the costs or capacities.
You generally post good stuff but I know the approximate cost of a whole house solar system even without storage batteries. Turbines I don't know anything about. Both of these methods would have had issues with snow and ice storm we just had plus short cloudy days. Think I could have had my house powered for $1150 the other morning with the methods you claimed are better investments?
