Cost to run a 15kw NG generator
bhackford
| Posted in Energy, Heating & Insulation on
What doe sit cost per hour. Someone told me 120 cf per hr? That seems very very expensive. Could this be right?
Replies
They are very very expensive to run. Last hurricane I had a client run his for two and a half days. I think he said the bill came to $40.00 per hour, so the kids could play video games in the AC. Fortunately he could afford it.
I ran my 6KW gas generator for an hour a day total 3 1/2 hours in three days, laundry, showers, e-mail, dishes and back to candles. Didn't run through more than a couple gallons of gas. And it was very peaceful.
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"You cannot work hard enough to make up for a sloppy estimate."
At 120 CF/hour, the cost to run the generator would range from $1/hr to $2/hr depending on the local price of NG.
I have a related question about NG. In a power outage situation, how long afterwards does NG flow? Isn't it pumped from a central location? Under what general conditions does the gas co. shut it down? I ham on bottled gas but ng is a few streets away and I wondered under what circumstances they shut down the ng flow?????
Aren't NG pumps powered by NG?
I'm not sure. I can't get an answer about the on/off in an emergency question locally. I am in Fla and wondered what experience others had with storms/outages/disaster and ng service. I feel in a real emergency they would shut it down which would kill backup generators and somewhat defeat the purpose. I have installed quite a few with LP and know the NG customer will come soon. The neighborhood where I live and often work is about 40% NG and I know little about it. The company TECO which handles the service has not been clear on policy and I wondered what others had seen.
Scott
In all my experience I've never seen NG flow stopped by a typical electrical outage lasting several hours. If that is an issue for your area. most NG generators can be converted to run on propane, but it costs 3X as much and you need a storage tank.
Nor with ice storms and the like that takes out power for upto a week.You might loose it in area of heavy flooding or storms that wash/blow away a large number of homes.In those cases it would be that stuff of the gas becasue they don't know how many broken lines/meters that there are so they "safety" the system..
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A-holes. Hey every group has to have one. And I have been elected to be the one. I should make that my tagline.
You might check with your state "public service commission". I suspect that they have rules and/or records of reliability that migh give you some clue.The trick is finding someone that has an idea of what you are talking about.For the gas co see if you can find from there website the some departments and/or deptarment heads to ask for.Or calling asking. Start with one like Marketing and System Safety..
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A-holes. Hey every group has to have one. And I have been elected to be the one. I should make that my tagline.
Engineering at the gas company would be my first call. It has to be part of their in house design standards that they will know.
during the hurricane , a guy had a 5000sq ft house. His generator ran a $1000 a week. I guess that why they are pushing generator. All about money.BOB is always right, ALL HAIL BOB
If you have a brand and model number, you can probably find out how much gas it uses from either the local manufacturer's rep or from the manufacturer's website.
I just looked at the Caterpillar website, and their 15kW Olympian model at 100% load uses 84.6 cfh on LP and 234cfh on natural gas. It uses less at lower load levels, of course - a little more than half that consumption rate at 50% load, for example.
we've had power our for weeks and never lost NG as long as you have a small generator you can plug in your blower motor and have heat...
i have a 5kw kabota man it ain't cheap to make your own power... about 15 gallons a day @ $3 a gallon... makes electric off the grid seem cheap
i've seen some old long stroke lester? diesels that run a generator... they only turn like 500 or less rpm but will run a 10kw generator for less than5gal a day.... so i'm told...
i have an LP genset in my motorhome (wish the gen set was diesel) $120 lasts about 3 days off the grid...
p
Friend had a propane 20KW installed right before Charlie. It ran for 8 days straight and used about 800 gallons at $1.90 a gallon. He didn't care since he could run his A/C and his keg cooler.