What will you run with limited power in a grid down??

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Tirediron

Tirediron

Seasoned HillBilly
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Dec 11, 2017
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Rural western Canada, Sunrise side of the Rockies
UrbanHunter posed a pretty valid question about this concept in the what's everybody doing thread. he used 1kw as a number, so lets start with that.
For me it would be the freezer, first priority, compact as much in one as possible. If it was a localized event, I would use my 1500w inverter and just rotate out batteries as needed, charging the batteries with my few solar panels, or "boost" charge them if I had a piece of machinery or truck running to do something else. If the outage appeared to go longer term probably remove the stuff from the fridge to a cooler and if there was room just rotate ice packs to the freezer, thus just 1 draw source. sonya123 had mentioned a chest fridge from chest freezer modification. the chest being more efficient due to the cold not flowing out nearly as much when the door is opened and probably better insulation.
 
I plan on utilizing my gennie as well to keep a freezer going untill it is empty.
That said, I plan on going down to one freezer since it seems events are escalating.
I'm going to can everything in the freezers then just keep it to one.
In order to do this I need to better organize my space so I can store my canning better.
Eventually I'll have a root cellar..
 
Living in hurricane central we are used to power outages.
But, praise God, they are usually relatively short.
As long as I had gasoline stored, I would keep the four freezers cold, running them alternately in series as we do now.
Plus a fan and a light or two.
Our well pumps have also had their circuits modified to run off the 220 side of the generator. They are only run when we need water for us or the animals.

Why four freezers? We have a half of a cow, half a pig, and two deer in there among other things.
 
rice paddy daddy said:
Living in hurricane central we are used to power outages.
But, praise God, they are usually relatively short.
As long as I had gasoline stored, I would keep the four freezers cold, running them alternately in series as we do now.
Plus a fan and a light or two.
Our well pumps have also had their circuits modified to run off the 220 side of the generator. They are only run when we need water for us or the animals.

Why four freezers? We have a half of a cow, half a pig, and two deer in there among other things.
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Thank you for sharing that. Yes, folks forget that we have people that work on and fix our 'grid'.
Down here in 'hurricane-central' we smash our 'grid' to the ground every few years. In the worst case areas, their power is back on in a month or less.
Everybody here owns a generator, except for the people who will bug out.
On topic: What will you run? The same stuff as when a hurricane kills the power.
You get good at 'rotating' which stuff runs when the gen is running.
So my answer is: more than the generator can power at once.
 
I have a lot to run.
5 deep freezers, 5 fridge/freezer combos. Like others pair that down if/as needed.
A source of heat, probably just woodstove fans.
I have a pumps on the septic side. Need to run those or we lose indoor plumbing.
I'm not too worried as I have multiple generators of various sizes and enough fuel to keep me going a long time.
Also have a small solar setup (500W) and several LiFePO4 and deep-cycle marine batteries.
 
When I asked the question it was because I find the real answer much harder than the idealistic one in my imagination.
The biggest problems appear in the long run, small generators use around 12 gallons of fuel per day, so anything more than a day or two becomes a problem. Experience has taught me that the sound of a generator at night when the power is out is a magnet for thieves.
Solar is unreliable due to the weather, but even on a sunny day there is really only about 1/3 of a day available to charge your battery bank, meaning you need at least 3 times your load in solar arrays. For a 1000 watt constant load at $1/watt I need to invest $3,000 in solar panels (not including wires, charge controllers, inverters, batteries, or installation). The batteries to cover that 1000 watt load would need to be at least 16,000 watt-hours, or about 14 12-volt 100-Amp-hour batteries at over $100 per battery.

The wife's medical equipment burns 500 watts 24/7, so that is job 1.
I have 3 freezers and 2 fridges, rotate the remaining 500 watts between them (until I can empty them), if I rotate power to them (2 hours on every 12 hours) it gives me 4 hours of 500 watts to do everything else.

The bottom line is that for every watt I can take out of my base load I can save about $6 in stand by power costs: Let me repeat $6/watt of covered load.
This is why the question of what should the priorities be is so important to me.

I have been building my system over the years, generator (need fuel and constant maintenance if you want it to work when you need it), small solar, battery bank(s) and inverter(s). What I have learned is that I can easily cover a couple of days, but should a real SHTF grid down event comes my way by day 6 I will be looking to shed loads ASAP... Having already decided what are my priorities will be an essential part of my planning.
 
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My thoughts are medical equipment is number one, and then freezers. One of the reasons that I always try to get people to do practice runs is the what happens if. and do you need to go silent running, any engine running in the quiet will be noticable
 
Cabin Fever said:
For this question, are we assuming gasoline for generators will always be available?
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No probably not, Maybe if it is a localized event, but the idea here is to figure out how much your minimum intake is , I guess in watts and watt hours. . what could you get around etc.
 
UrbanHunter said:
The biggest problems appear in the long run, small generators use around 12 gallons of fuel per day, so anything more than a day or two becomes a problem.
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Please elaborate. My small (1000-3000W) generators can run for hours and hours on a single gallon.
My 15,000W generator doesn't even burn 12 gallons/day.
I wouldn't run my generator(s) constantly. Just boost everything back up (which takes a couple hours) then shut the genset off for a day.
 
zoomzoom said:
Please elaborate. My small (1000-3000W) generators can run for hours and hours on a single gallon.
My 15,000W generator doesn't even burn 12 gallons/day.
I wouldn't run my generator(s) constantly. Just boost everything back up (which takes a couple hours) then shut the genset off for a day.
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I had just looked up generator fuel consumption online, a 3500 watt generator running at full load burns .75 gallons per hour, that's where that came from (~.5 gallons per hour, being generous).

I have used a 5700 watt gasoline generator for a long weekend to cover just the medical equipment/freezers/fridge+ an extension cord to the neighbor and burned through ~25 gallons of gas... (At the start 8 was in the tank, and I had 4 5 gallon jugs, all empty at the end of day 3). If they are running at low load they get better fuel economy, but not if you have them loaded up. If you need to cover 7 days it becomes a lot of fuel no matter how you look at it, I always kept 20 gallons plus I keep the fuel tanks in all my vehicles full, but to cover a full week without resupply becomes a big issue.
PS: Note: I was shutting mine down after about 10PM - neighbor a block over ran his all night on day 1, on day 2 at about 3AM his generator went silent... ly into the night.....
 
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This is my "Boots in the Field" past "EXPERIENCE" just for myself. I have four freezers, but they and their content are not critical for my survival.

What I "crave" the most during long-term "zero" power, is intelligence. Not knowing the gravity of the situation, is hell after a week or two.
Not knowing the "local" and national/Alaska situation is most vexing.

Where I live if the grid goes down, the internet and phone service also go down. So, I then don't know if it is a local, state or national issue.

Grid down for months should not affect my probable survival but would be "HELL" on my mental comfort.
 
UrbanHunter said:
I had just looked up generator fuel consumption online, a 3500 watt generator running at full load burns .75 gallons per hour, that's where that came from (~.5 gallons per hour, being generous).
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Respect. ;)
Where I was coming from was that I only run the genset for a couple hours per day. That's minimal fuel usage.
 
UrbanHunter said:
I had just looked up generator fuel consumption online, a 3500 watt generator running at full load burns .75 gallons per hour, that's where that came from (~.5 gallons per hour, being generous).

I have used a 5700 watt gasoline generator for a long weekend to cover just the medical equipment/freezers/fridge+ an extension cord to the neighbor and burned through ~25 gallons of gas... (At the start 8 was in the tank, and I had 4 5 gallon jugs, all empty at the end of day 3). If they are running at low load they get better fuel economy, but not if you have them loaded up. If you need to cover 7 days it becomes a lot of fuel no matter how you look at it, I always kept 20 gallons plus I keep the fuel tanks in all my vehicles full, but to cover a full week without resupply becomes a big issue.
PS: Note: I was shutting mine down after about 10PM - neighbor a block over ran his all night on day 1, on day 2 at about 3AM his generator went silent... ly into the night.....
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I agree w/ Zoom in that our generator doesn't use that much fuel either and we've had it running for substantial durations before.
Also - obviously wife's medical is priority.
On the food front: I have more for you to calculate. 😇 Not sure what all you have in your freezer/fridge, but how much power and time would it take to can, eat, or dehydrate the content? Knowing that would also help you figure how many days at the higher usage rate before being able to nix certain things all together. (Does that make sense?) You'll use more during the few days of processing then you will thereafter.
 
zoomzoom said:
Respect. ;)
Where I was coming from was that I only run the genset for a couple hours per day. That's minimal fuel usage.
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Back when the event (~10 years ago) I was talking about we lost power at about 3PM on Thursday afternoon and were able to set up the generator and get extension cords in place. Experience had taught me not to run the generator at night unattended, so I was shutting it down just after 9:30. The wife was using a CPAP machine but 2 100AH lead-acid batteries covered that just fine. To get extra gas we had to drive 5 miles, but I was supplying power to 2 neighbors (they had to take turns being plugged in) who ran and got 10 gallons of additional fuel (I only had 2 5-gallon cans at the start). By Sunday night about midnight power was restored, we didn't lose any food but we learned a lot.

Since then I have learned if the power goes out in the late evening, in near-freezing rain. I really don't want to be pulling the generator out of the shed and trying to pull start it in the dark. After doing it a couple of times I started thinking that I want something at the ready that I can turn on with the flip of a switch in my underwear if necessary.

Today, an oxygen machine (500 watts 24/7) takes the option of shutting down at night away from me. Now, I have 6 100AH LifePO4 batteries that can run it (and just the O2 machine) for 12 hours before being fully depleted. But that is 7,200 watt hours of energy storage, the first time I tried them out in earnest I learned that they just barely covered the time till my solar started making power in the morning. I also learned that if you are using a 15 amp smart charger it takes almost 2 days to fully charge them :( , not good. So I invested in a much larger smart charger for that battery bank so it can be fully charge in a (solar) day. Thankfully in this first real test, my lead-acid battery bank that is directly connected to the solar garden was much larger and it was able to run the O2 machine for the second night of the event. During this event I was running the O2 machine, the CPAP (at night), charging phones, an AC during mid-day, running the smart charger in the daytime, and maintaining the Freezer(s)/Fridge: By the end of day 2 my battery banks were all drained and more clouds were rolling in, as I was preparing to fuel and start the generator the GRID was restored. But I learned that for long term silent running I would need to expand both my charging and my storage capacity; I also decided that I would need to develop a power management strategy to make the most of what I have.

All this rolls back to choosing what I will power in a SHTF event and how much Power (generation/energy storage) do I need at my disposal. Everyone is unique and their needs are what they are. But for me taking the time to step back and say, "that's not going to cut it" is an important step in the process.

Post Script/Edit: after reading @zoomzoom and @LadyLocust 's posts it is also clear that people who spend more time "off GRID" learn to prioritize and use more energy efficient devices (no upright freezers)... and those of us who are more grid tied can be very wasteful with our device choices.
 
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If you have a spring that does not flow enough to power a water wheel build a dam, use it to drop water over a paddle wheel and use an old truck transmission with a heavy fly wheel and spin weight brake governor to get constant a 540 RPM for a tractor pto alternator.

I would use a featherable windmill for your well pump if it is not a deep well pusher.

Like any wind system it will have to have a raised storage tank to be viable for daily domestic use

I need a trypist, TYPIST I SAID>
 
12icemaker said:
If you have a spring that does not flow enough to power a water wheel build a dam, use it to drop water over a paddle wheel and use an old truck transmission with a heavy fly wheel and spin weight brake governor to get constant a 540 RPM for a tractor pto alternator.

I would use a featherable windmill for your well pump if it is not a deep well pusher.

Like any wind system it will have to have a raised storage tank to be viable for daily domestic use

I need a trypist, TYPIST I SAID>
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I read it as therapist and thought, "So do I." 😂
 
Aerindel said:
1Kw isn't limited.....its about what I run right now.

100 watt is what I plan on.

ipads...phones...radios.....water pumps, headlamp chargers.
Click to expand...

This is what I plan on powering, but I can manually get water from the well if needed.
 
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