On 11/11/2011 15:04, Phil Kane wrote:
On Fri, 11 Nov 2011 10:12:31 EST, Jeffrey
wrote:

Both propane, gasoline and diesel require electrical service
to run the pumps. And tanks that need to be refilled.

And good luck getting a permit for any decent-sized tank for those
fuels in any residential area. I'm talking about 96-hour capacity,
not a five-gallon Jerry can.
--

73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane

From a Clearing in the Silicon Forest
Beaverton (Washington County) Oregon

e-mail: k2asp [at] arrl [dot] net


Phil

Perhaps there is that much difficulty getting such permits were you are
but it is not uncommon in Maryland for people to have five hundred
gallon propane tanks when they heat with the stuff. Underground fuel
oil tanks are not uncommon either, although new ones are expensive to
install. Above ground concrete encased tanks are the storage of choice
for commercial sites now because less monitoring for leakage is
required. Those are also fairly pricey though. What you cannot get a
permit for is above ground storage in shipping containers such as five
gallon plastic cans or fifty five gallon drums. If you need to store
fuel in the same containers that will be used to dispense and transport
them then the containers must be stored in a flammable liquids cabinet.
Those are also quite pricey. So the cheapest one to store lawfully
would appear to be propane. My firehouse heated the apparatus bay with
propane and used it to fuel an eighty kilowatt generator/ A five day
outage used two thirds of the propane tanks one thousand gallon
capacity. If that duel fueled unit had had a natural gas connection we
would have had a smaller tank for the propane which would have been used
only as a backup fuel supply.

--
Tom Horne

Why not just do it right to start with? My gas appliances (furnace, stove,
hot water) are fueled with propane in an underground tank. Yes, propane is
expensive. When I moved to this house my first major purchase was a 10kw
Guardian standby generator hooked to the propane tank. Within 5 days after
the thing was installed, the power went out.... The generator has been a
Godsend out here.

Howard N7SO
upstate NY

Howard Lester wrote:
Why not just do it right to start with? My gas appliances (furnace, stove,
hot water) are fueled with propane in an underground tank. Yes, propane is
expensive. When I moved to this house my first major purchase was a 10kw
Guardian standby generator hooked to the propane tank. Within 5 days after
the thing was installed, the power went out.... The generator has been a
Godsend out here.

You should be able to run heating and a diesel generator from the same tank
if you choose a boiler which runs on diesel grade rather than kerosene..

g4jci

On Fri, 2011-11-11 at 23:44 -0500, wrote:
Howard Lester wrote:
Why not just do it right to start with? My gas appliances (furnace, sto
ve,
hot water) are fueled with propane in an underground tank. Yes, propane
is
expensive. When I moved to this house my first major purchase was a 10k
w
Guardian standby generator hooked to the propane tank. Within 5 days af
ter
the thing was installed, the power went out.... The generator has been
a
Godsend out here.

You should be able to run heating and a diesel generator from the same ta
nk
if you choose a boiler which runs on diesel grade rather than kerosene..

Since my furnace and hot water heater both use natural gas, I'm
interested in using *that* to fuel a generator, but (as I wrote before),
I'm looking for cost figures that will help me to make an informed
decision about the most cost-effective fuel.

This is, of course, a complicated calculation: natural gas is more
convenient, but limits the genset to one location. Diesel is (so I've
heard) less expensive than gas, but the genset will cost more
initially.

If you are reading this, and *YOU* have bought or used any of the
options I've listed, please make your opinion known.

Tnx es 73,

Bill W1AC

On 11/12/2011 7:23 PM, Bill Horne wrote:
Since my furnace and hot water heater both use natural gas, I'm
interested in using*that* to fuel a generator, but (as I wrote before),
I'm looking for cost figures that will help me to make an informed
decision about the most cost-effective fuel.

This is, of course, a complicated calculation: natural gas is more
convenient, but limits the genset to one location. Diesel is (so I've
heard) less expensive than gas, but the genset will cost more
initially.

If you are reading this, and*YOU* have bought or used any of the
options I've listed, please make your opinion known.

I converted a 1967 Dodge 1/2 ton pick up truck with a slant
6 cylinder engine to run dual fuel. Propane and Gasoline. It
came in quite handy while dealing with the manufactured gas
crisis. "No gasoline? No problem, I'll fill it with propane."

I currently own a Honda 4500 watt genset. That's my "portable".
I'll keep it running on gasoline as designed. It runs for
about 4 hours with a full tank and an 80% load. For the record,
I run premium grade gasoline and add Stabil to it.

The Empire 12 KW genset with the Wisconsin VF4D engine runs on
gas, but I've decided to convert it to natural gas as the
standby set for the house. (Looks like the conversion setup for
that will cost $277.) But it will run continuously and I don't
have to deal with fuel storage.

At my previous location, fuel storage was an issue, I had to
maintain about 10 each 5 gallon cans. Which included dumping
them into the car periodically and refilling them with fresh
gasoline.

My question would be "In the event of a widespread failure,
what is going to go away first? Gasoline supplies, piped
natural gas or trucked Propane." And decide which fuel to
use based on that.

For what it's worth, the AT&T sites I used to go to (Which
were sold to American Tower) used diesel generator sets.

And one other tidbit. I refuse to use Arco Gasoline. It tends
to dissolve rubber bits and gaskets in generator engines.

Jeff-1.0
wa6fwi

--
"Everything from Crackers to Coffins"

"Bill Horne" wrote

This is, of course, a complicated calculation: natural gas is more
convenient, but limits the genset to one location. Diesel is (so I've
heard) less expensive than gas, but the genset will cost more
initially.

If you are reading this, and *YOU* have bought or used any of the
options I've listed, please make your opinion known.

Bill, in my case I am forced to use propane because there are no natural-gas
lines where I live. Supposedly natural gas is far cheaper, but as Jeff said,
its supply to your house can be cut off in a disaster. For the record, my
10kw Guardian generator and transfer box cost $4.1K installed. This was done
2 years ago. It connects to the line of the existing 500 gallon underground
propane tank. When the electricity goes out, the generator comes on
automatically in about 20 seconds. No flashlights are required, and you
don't have to get out of a warm bed to find any switches or matches.

Howard N7SO

"Bill Horne" wrote in message
news:1321147426.4755.14.camel@Thinkpad...
This is, of course, a complicated calculation: natural gas is more
convenient, but limits the genset to one location. Diesel is (so I've
heard) less expensive than gas, but the genset will cost more
initially.

If you are reading this, and *YOU* have bought or used any of the
options I've listed, please make your opinion known.

You really don't want to go the diesel route unless you are prepared for a
significant amount of maintenance (both of the genset and the fuel). Stored
diesel fuel grows all sorts of stuff that will quickly plug fuel filters.
In cold weather starting is difficult unless you use auxiliary heaters to
keep the generator warm.

I've dealt with backup power for radio and television stations for forty
five years and standby diesel will absolutely not be reliable, unless you
maintain a rigid maintenance program and exercise the plant religiously.

For a home size plant, I opted for propane, since that is the only heating
fuel available to me, and reasonable run time comes from a 500 gallon
propane tank that would be in place in any event. No fuel stability issues,
reasonable maintenance required, and once I move up to a large enough unit
to deal with a 1-1/2 HP well pump, several pumps for the septic system,
furnace, the incremental cost to go to a 20KW units was very small.

I'm in the Mother Lode part of the Sierra Foothills, and, surprisingly, most
of our long outages come in the summer, when wildland fires cause
transmission shutdowns. The 20 KW unit manages the air conditioning as well
since the compressor is a low starting current scroll type.

Bill
KB0RF

In news:1321147426.4755.14.camel@Thinkpad Bill Horne
wrote:

Diesel is (so I've heard) less expensive than gas,

Not around here, it's not.

At the moment, regular unleaded gas is going for about $3.25/gal, while
diesel is about $4.00/gal.

The few times I've actually looked at the price of diesel, it's always
been more expensive than gasoline.

--
Bert Hyman W0RSB St. Paul, MN

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In Bert writes:

In news:1321147426.4755.14.camel@Thinkpad Bill Horne
wrote:

Diesel is (so I've heard) less expensive than gas,

Not around here, it's not.

At the moment, regular unleaded gas is going for about $3.25/gal, while
diesel is about $4.00/gal.

The few times I've actually looked at the price of diesel, it's always
been more expensive than gasoline.

--
Bert Hyman W0RSB St. Paul, MN

True, but what's important to look at is the overall cost relative to
the energy produced.

Diesel fuel has more energy per gallon than gasoline (145,000 BTU's
vs. 125,000):

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/diesel3.htm

Diesel engines, which use the Carnot cycle, are more efficient,
recovering about 45% of the energy from diesel fuel, versus 30% of the
energy for a gasoline engine:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_engine

So the increased energy content and the the increased energy efficiency
means that diesel engines will have an energy advantage over a gasoline
engine of about 1.75 to 1 per gallon of fuel. This more than
compensates for the greater cost ratio of about 1.25 to 1. Diesel
engines may have other drawbacks that were pointed out in this thread
(maintenance, heating, noise, pollution), but energy efficiency and cost
of fuel isn't one of them. That's why it's used in transportation that
requires a lot of energy and fuel (railroads, long-haul trucking,
container ships, etc.).

Conversely, E85 (85% ethanol, 15% gasoline) has less energy content:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E85

and engines that are designed to burn both gasoline and E85 are not
optimally efficient to burn E85 (requires higher compression).
Therefore, though E85 is much cheaper per gallon, it is only worthwhile
to use when the "price spread" is at least 15% or more. Seems that
there's a web site that surveys prices by region, and identifies when
and where this price spread makes it cost-advantaged to use E85
vs. gasoline:

http://www.e85prices.com/

Locally, this usually happens when the price of gasoline goes much over
$4/gallon.

- --
73, Paul W. Schleck, K3FU

http://www.novia.net/~pschleck/
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On 11/18/2011 1:58 PM, Paul W. Schleck wrote:

True, but what's important to look at is the overall cost relative to
the energy produced. [snip]

So the increased energy content and the the increased energy efficiency
means that diesel engines will have an energy advantage over a gasoline
engine of about 1.75 to 1 per gallon of fuel. This more than
compensates for the greater cost ratio of about 1.25 to 1.

Paul,

Thanks for filling in the background on this. I'm reminded of the time
my sister rented a diesel-powered truck, and told me that she did it
because, although diesel was slightly higher than gas at the pump, the
truck would get over thirty miles per gallon.

Of course, the relative efficiency of the fuels is an important factor,
but I'm in need of advice from those who have operated BOTH gas and
diesel generators, because I need to know what the other costs a

1. Purchase price
2. Maintenance expenses
3. Fuel storage
4. Reliability

So, if you've owned or operated /both/ diesel and gas generators, please
chime in. Thanks!

Bill, W1AC

P.S. I'm also curious (although, frankly, it's not that high on my list)
about whether a diesel engine could run alternative fuels like
restaurant grease or the other "green" substitutes for diesel AND about
other hams who have actually done it.


--
Bill Horne
(Remove QRM from my address to write to me directly)