re: In Thibodaux, Whole Home Generators Not Working

Sounds like a class action law suit against the gas company, generac and the local weather station reporters.

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Does anyone know of this problem occurring in any other towns or cities during a hurricane power outage?

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It occurred in Texas after Beryl.

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Volume per unit, Gen vs Furnace, of course.

Can you quantify the number of whole home NG generators in a radius vs NG furnaces, and aggregate total usage when temps hit 35 degrees? See what I'm saying?

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Some rough numbers..

Everything in my house that can use natural gas does use it. Gas furnace, water heater, range, dryer. My peak usage the last 12 months was in February, roughly ~283 cubic feet per day. However as mentioned that’s in a house with gas everything. If you subtract my normal summer time usage then the usage from my furnace is roughly 212 cubic feet per day.

A Generac 14 kW standby generator at 50% load uses 195 cubic feet per hour. So that’s roughly 28 cubic feet per kWh.

Last week my house used ~59 kWh per day. And that’s with a bunch of gas appliances as I mentioned, but we’ve already (sort of) accounted for that by removing them from my gas usage.

To power my house from a standby generator, that would be 59 kWh * 28 cu ft/kWh = 1,652 cubic feet per day. Running my furnace adds roughly 212 cubic feet per day. So the generator would use something like 7-8x as much gas as my furnace.

At first glance you could say, order of magnitude, that each standby generator equates to something like 7-8 gas furnaces. But then there are a few other factors to consider:

1. Home standby generators are a luxury, and are likely to be more concentrated in affluent areas or areas with a lot of new houses. So the impact on gas pressure would be larger in the areas where standby generators are more common. On top of that, I would bet the average house with a standby generator is significantly larger than the average house with a gas furnace. This will also skew the ratio.

2. I could be wrong, but I would think that standby generators would be more susceptible to starving from low inlet pressure than furnaces since the gas is running a combustion engine rather than just being used for heating. Add to this that the regulator setups people have installed for standby generators may have more difficulty dealing with the lower supply pressure than a lower-volume regulator on a furnace.

3. After a hurricane there are often other issues lowering gas pressure, for example a tree falls on a house and causes a leak.

4. It’s not just the folks with permanently-installed standby generators. A lot of people have tri-fuel portable generators that they hook up to a gas line so that they don’t have to refill propane/gasoline.

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Here you go you dumb shite for brains. You got LUCKY not ban betting me.

Local News Thibodaux Whole Home Generators

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What do you think that article says about "throttling back" the supply?

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The article shows I didn't just make up the issue of NG standby gens not working which was why I called his shite out.

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I don't think you were being challenged about the generators not working, it was the "throttling back" statement.

When I hear "throttling back", I take it to mean intentionally closing valves to reduce the supply of NG. But from what I've read, the demand just exceeded what they could supply, no one was "throttling back" (trying to conserve it or something? For what?).

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I don't think you were being challenged about the generators not working, it was the "throttling back" statement.

When I hear "throttling back", I take it to mean intentionally closing valves to reduce the supply of NG. But from what I've read, the demand just exceeded what they could supply, no one was "throttling back" (trying to conserve it or something? For what?).

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Exactly. Clearly there were issues somewhere. Supply, line size, mechanical, whatever. None of that is "local government intentionally starves citizens of utility in time of crisis" like this dumb frick carpet bagger is trying to claim by spouting off rumors and hearsay...

I live in Spring/Woodlands area north of Houston. When Beryl hit, my Generac 22KW ran continuously for 8 days (shut if off every morning to check oil) without any NG problems until power was restored.

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trying to claim by spouting off rumors and hearsay.


There you go again with claiming these were rumors and hearsay. These were actual residents of Thibodaux being interviewed the very next morning and this is exactly what they said when I made the OP you cantankerous, non comprehension retard. I'm still laughing at how I threw a ban bet your way and you weren't even man enough to accept the challenge. Spineless coward

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You still without HVAC or why else are you so butthurt?

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baldona

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You understand Coon bumped this thread right? My God the posters on the OT are becoming stupider by the day. Congrats on your dumb reply. Would have taken you literally 3 seconds to see who brought my thread back to the first page of TD.

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if you rely on a utility for a utility during a storm the utility could go down

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No shite?

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'm not advocating for Propane or diesel, there's no perfect solution. A tanked system could run out, a utlity fed system could be affected by a utility company issue.

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No shite?

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A utility line could be damaged too, tree uprooted or something like that breaking the line.

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You don't say? I wish you would have enlightened us on the first page of this thread instead of waiting so long for these ground breaking insights.