Generator- How much fuel to have on hand

Cas

Well-known Member
The post below that dealt with banks and generators got me thinking. There is quite a bit on this forum about generators.
But, how much would be a reasonable amount of fuel to have on hand? The town I live in does not have one gas outlet with a generator. The few times the power has been out they have been closed.
 
My backup generator is hooked up to my propane tank. I try to never let it get below 250 gallon. So my backup generator can run over a week, 24/7 on less than 250 gallon.

If your going to use a gas powered generator you should store a weeks worth of fuel.
 
The small town by where I live, there is one gas station. You got it, underground tanks and computerized system to pump it. As far as I know they do not have generator back up, and on short little power outages they just close. They do have a small supply station (for a little bulk route service) with above ground tanks. I am pretty sure they would get help from comunity to hook a generator up to the place if the power outage lasted for more than a day or so. How long their fuel on hand would last and wether there would be anymore coming in might be a different story.
 
Around here, the longest I've ever gone without power, and had to run my generator, was about 12 days. I've got an 8500 watt generator powered by a 2 cylinder Lister Petter. I can run somewhere around 24 hours on roughly 5 gallons of fuel. I've got a 15 gallon tank and usually have a 55 gallon drumor so sitting around, along with the fuel in the tanks on my service truck that I could drain if needed. This gives me around 20 days of run time, 24/7, if need be.
 
We went through a week long power outage recently. I was using about 12 gallons (gas) per day with two generators running. The majority was for livestock water. I got caught a bit short, but could have pumped some out of a truck or two and got by fine. There are only two fuel suppliers in our area and neither had a generator. When the seriousness of the situation was realized, our one bulk supplier had a generator in place by the second day. He also kept his bulk trucks going for the entire week. I don't think he was ever out of fuel. They did have to bring more in. One of our service stations was out of gas for a short time. As you would expect, there was a 'run' on the local supplies ! Our outage was during the summer and I don't worry about keeping much extra gas around. Diesel is my concern. However, we do keep a week or more gas supply around in the fall / winter / spring.
 
A gasoline genset uses a lot of fuel if you run it constantly. If you want to run something 24/7 you really need a different set up. Even then you go through a lot more fuel than you'd imagine. You have to prioritize and be smart about it. Water pump battery charger, keep the deep freeze froze, stuff like that. No tv, drier, electric range.
 
I have had standby generators since the ice storm back in the '80's where we were without power for 4 days just to find out the problem was half a mile down the road where the line men couldn't see the tree damage. Course since then they have better ways to track power.

I had a little 10 hp portable. It worked ok but had extension cords all over and I had to drag it out and put it up. I kept 10 gallons of fuel around and ran out. Couldn't get out to get more.

Then I bought a 16 hp portable, 6.5 kw primarily to run my welder in remote areas but to also use as a house backup. Same problem, having enough gas and dragging it out and the cords.

So we had another ice storm last December and another 4 days. I found that I used the smaller one due to fuel and again I had 2 ea 5 gallon cans on hand and ran out.

So this Feb. I decided to do something about the problem. I got a Generac 11kw permanent installation with a transfer switch and bought a 250 gallon propane tank. Tank fill max is 80% so I can only store 200 gallons.

The generator runs on just over 1 gallon per hour at half power and a little over 2 if I have the full load. Since the load constantly varies, and you can modify your activities when you are on gen power, no telling how long that will last; but it's a far cry better than what I had.

What put me onto the idea and the brand was last winter I was on here and some guy had a new house built and had included a Generac power unit. He showed us a picture. That started me to thinking and the rest is history.

I looked up the brand and found that they have built over 1 million units over the years. Good enough for me. Mine is fully automatic. It senses utility power and if it goes down for 15 seconds the generator automatically is on line, power transfer switch throws automatically and power is restored. When utility power returns, it turns itself off. Once a week it turns on and runs for 15 minutes to keep things lubed and the battery charged.

What's nice about it is that this past summer we had some electrical storms come through and we weren't the least bit concerned about having to do without lights and especially air conditioning. A real peace of mind. Money well spent.

Food for thought.

Mark
 
I had several gas generators over the years and it was a pain to refuel them in the dark and dangerous. In 2012 we decided to buy a Kohler
standby generator. It will run on LP or NG. We have NG. The generator is programmed to start once a week for 20 minutes. The NG fuel line is Wardflex. When that storm Sandy hit the east coast in Oct 2012 we lost power for 26 hours. My neighbors were calling why I had lights. I got tired of running extension cords. It will start
automatically when you lose power. Hal
 
It really depends where you live, In my whole 63 years in MN I have never seen the power off for more than a few hours. We have a little POS Coleman powermate and when we lived near St Cloud I used it a couple of times. It would run the furnace and the coffee pot! I always keep 3-5 gallons of gas around. The last time the power was off at the cabin I used a 12 volt battery and an inverter, ran the TV and the lights. We have wood heat at both places.
 
3500 watt portable and it will run about 3 hours per gallon so 24 hours a day devide by 3 is 8 gallons per day and has been off for a week at a time, could not get to station even if they were able to be able to get gass so 7 days times 8 gallons is 35 gallons but then the tractor for snow plowing also uses the same fuel so should have 50 gal min in winter. I haven't made it to have that much on hand.
 
My brother managed a retirement park in Florida. A hurricane hit them. The trailer park needed generators to run their lift pumps. Their issue was the gas stations didn't have electricity to run their pumps for 3 weeks. Unless you have a very large propane or diesel tank, it would be hard to have enough gas on hand for 3 weeks.

So far the longest we've gone without electricity may be 7-10 days. When that happens, the gas stations are still open. I have 2 homes. Never has both places been without electricity. Usually I lose power in the spring when the weather is unstable, windy, tornadoes.

I have portable LP heaters, but haven't had to use them.
 
We had a bad ice storm about 15 years ago, and as a result, most of the gas stations have backup generators. It was tough for a while trying to find gas then. National guard lent a few to stations that had gas to get people through.
 
Agree with what others have said, it is difficult to keep enough fuel on hand for some of the portable generators. I did not have a generator until I went through about a 12 day outage, and by the time I was without power for about 5 days I purchased one, but quickly found out I would burn 5 gallons of gasoline in about 8 hours run time without much load on it. That gets fairly expensive considering I was burning roughly $50 worth of fuel in a 24 hour period depending on load. I just try to keep 5-10 gallons of gas around, not only for mowers, etc, but in case of power outages, and if I foresee storms or ice conditions I try to have more, but if the local convenience stores are without power, that will not last long. A longer/better solution is like others have said, and go with a propane powered generator. I did wire up a plug on the meter base so that all I have to do is throw off the main from power, plug a pigtail from my generator, and fire it up, and my entire house is powered up (use common sense and make sure all high demand items are powered off first and only use what is necessary).
 

I would keep at least enough gas on hand to run it for 3 days.
Also buy premium and add Star-Tron additive when you get it. I do that and it is still good 1 year later and no carb gumup.
 
This summer I installed a Kohler 20 KW (yes, it's overkill) whole-house propane powered back-up generator.

At the same time, I prebought 2500 gallons of propane at $1.39/gal and got a "free" 500 gallon tank. I now own two 500 gallon tanks with plumbing and valving to allow operating the genset and furnace from either.

Never again will I be forced to buy propane in the cold season.

Dean
 
I usually keep about 15 to 20 gallons in stock, at least during fall/winter/spring when potential for outages is the greatest. During the summer the fuel gets rotated through tractors so it's fairly fresh. If I really got despirate, I could drain out fuel from tractors. Local party store hss back up power, so further fuel is probably not a problem. I burn probably 5 gallons a day with very careful stingy use of electricity. Water refrigeration and heat are primarily needs, can be very conserative on other uses. Use a 4 or 5 kw unit, so conservation is a must. Run only necessary things. Home power generation is a pain, and expensive. Amazing how you can lower your standard of living if necessary.
 
That's pretty much a matter of your specific circumstances. For me, I want enough to run my generator 12 hrs a day for 3 days if it's for winter storm outages, but I make sure we have enough to run it 6 or 8 hours a day in case of earthquake. For the earthquake scenario, I am okay with draining gas from vehicles to run the generator.
 
Hands down the best way to have a large fuel storage is to have your own 500 gallon propane tank with a small 10kw gen set. Having a small 5k gasoline genset is a PITA to keep running with extension cords and all that crap.
 
That fuel consumption sounds light unless there is almost no load on the generator.

Figure 2 horsepower per kilowatt, and 6 to 8 HP-Hours per gallon of gas from a small engine only gives you 3 to 4 Kilowatt-Hours per gallon of gas.
 
You better bet...use Star-tron!! When Sandy came up the coast I lost power in southern nj for about ten seconds! Just a little blip is all. Now ten miles north and west were ripped to pieces!!! I had five 5 gallon cans and a 3 1/2 gallon can all with Hi-test ready to go for almost a week of on off running. Put it through my lawn tractors and Explorer over several weeks after that. I now have a beauty of a Homelite 3000 watt and a Homelite 8000 watt both from 1985. They are both real copper wire and cast block engines!! Beast time.
 
That's pretty close. As I said my 11kw Generac advertises 1 gph at half power.....5.5 kw. That's where your calculations are.

Mark
 
I have a 16KW automatic hooked to my propane tank. Would probably run over a week if needed. Best money I ever spent.
 

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