Generator

A generator is a small diesel or gasoline engine hooked up to a 120 or 240 V generator 'head'. Depending on how often you will use it, your maintenance abilities, your pocket book and the prices of fuel where you live you will have to choose between the various products.

We have chosen for a 6500 Watt Kubota 2 cylinder diesel generator. I chose diesel because diesel engines are more reliable than gas engines, and I wanted one that is large enough to run the whole house if I have to. Also diesels are reasonably economic when it comes to fuel consumption, so it can run for about 6 hours before it needs to be refuelled. It features electric start and a whole batch of outlets on the instrument panel, as well as auto-idle and breakers to protect the generator portion from overload. It wasn't cheap though, and now that the whole system is up and running we have not been using it for a while.

Possibly this is one area where you can save quite a bit of money when you install a system like this.