| Online: | |
| Visits: | |
| Stories: |
| Story Views | |
| Now: | |
| Last Hour: | |
| Last 24 Hours: | |
| Total: | |
Another Option for Emergency Power, by Freedom Loving Texan
I’m a long-time reader of SurvivalBlog, and like so many others I am deeply concerned about the choices our country has made in the last twenty years and the as yet unfelt repercussions. We seem to be living in a season of grace, but the day of reckoning will come, sooner or later. With this thought in mind, my family has been steadily pursuing the ability to care for ourselves (and perhaps some of our neighbors as well).
Like many others have done, I have read and researched many methods of generating enough power to live on. Today, most Americans have more power than we can burn, and we burn it to excess. While it is not necessary to have endless electricity to live, I also don’t want to power only the absolute necessities. If my family and I are going to live through whatever may come, and if we get to choose, we would prefer a decent quality of life over just living. That’s why we prep, right? However, our funds are limited, and a nice $25,000 solar system just was not the answer. A $5,000 stand-alone home generator was a possibility, but just like Alton Brown on “Good Eats”, I don’t like to purchase “Single Purpose Gadgets”.
That’s when the idea hit me. Why not buy a tractor-driven generator that could power my house?
We live in a rural part of Texas, which is part of our preps. A tractor is a necessity here, and diesel fuel is readily available. I’ll wager there is over 1000 gallons stored within two miles of my house. Everyone has at least 200-300 gallons. I have often needed electricity to power a saw while putting up fences, or to run lights behind the barn. A PTO-powered generator can be easily moved about in a steel cradle via the 3-point hitch. Others, which are mounted on a trailer that you pull with the tractor, provide instant power and are 75% less expensive than a stand-alone home generator, because you already own the engine that turns the generator– the tractor!
Step 1: Trim Current Power Requirements
If you don’t consume it, you don’t have to generate it. When our old fridge died three years ago, we bought a new model based on size, power consumption, and features/looks (in that order). When the 100-watt flood lamps over the bathroom counter burned out, I replaced them with 17 watt LED’s. I paid my HVAC contractor to install zone dampers on our system; now we don’t cool large rooms which we are not using (think living and dining areas). Over the last three years, my electricity bill has gone down by almost $50 per month.
Step 2: Do a Load Analysis
This is easy enough by using a watt meter. I used the kill-a-watt, available on eBay, and to my pleasant surprise I discovered that I can “get by” with 5.5 KW. If I really want quality of life (in Texas, that means some refrigerated air conditioning), I’ll need a nominal 8 KW.
Source: http://survivalblog.com/another-option-for-emergency-power-by-freedom-loving-texan/
