Quote Originally Posted by Tracker123 View Post
Also was considering converting one of my generators to propane/natural gas since hurricane season is coming up. Doesn't make sense (so far) in the conversion. It appears the folks doing the conversions are as ignorant as the home owners doing the conversions. Will investigate this further.
Just for the record, this homeowner easily converted his portable generator to run on propane, natural gas or gasoline after some research. Works flawlessly and have seen only a small drop in wattage when going from gasoline to natural gas. Still powers all 6 circuits on my transfer switch with some wattage to spare. My objective from the beginning was to be able to run the generator during an extended outage and not have to drive all around town looking for open gas stations and sit in long lines. Here's my calculations:
NOTE: 1 "therm" = ~100,000 btu's. 1HP will consume ~ 10,000 btu's/hr of natural gas. So,
10 hp(100,000 btu's/hr) X 24 hrs = 2.4 million btu's
2.4 million btu's divided by 1 "therm" (100,000 btu's) = 24 "therms" per day.
In July, Aug & Sept of last year my natural gas cost was ~$1.65 per "therm". Therefore, if the generator consumes 24 "therms" per day at $1.65 per therm multiplied by say maybe 5 days, that cost would be ~$200. Last hurricane I was filling my generator up with ~10 gal of gasoline every 24 hrs. 1 gallon back during Hurricane Gustav I believe was around $3.50, maybe more. 10 gallons X $3.50/gal = $35 X 5 days = $175
While the natural gas fuel usage may work out to be a little more in dollars than the gasoline cost per gallon, the headaches are a lot less.
Extra natural gas utility cost during the next hurricane....$200. No more hunting for gasoline during that time....priceless!