Your experience with whole-house generators

[commasense]

We’re on Nahant, and our provider is National Grid.

But you’re right that the issue is, how many outages can we expect, and for how long? We’ve had summer time outages ranging from a few minutes to a few hours, but as I mentioned, the last two winters that we’ve been here for have been relatively warm with little snow.

I’ve asked at Town Hall if they have any records of outages, and they said no, check with National Grid, which I’ll try to do soon, but I’m not optimistic they’ll provide any useful info.

[mjmartin]

@commasense

We’re on Nahant, and our provider is National Grid.

Oh, then I would certainly be looking into the generator. It always amazes me that when there are large storms, we have our power back on in 2 hours, and the neighboring towns that have National Grid take 3 days. But I guess that’s the difference between a local company and a national one.

[muldoonthief]

I concur with mjmartin, especially if you’re on Nahant. I suspect that on a widespread outage, that’s going to be one of the last places to get power back, being a small island, especially if the problem is more than just the lines that supply the island.

Having said that, while it may take a few days for power to return, in my 30-ish years living in the Boston area the roads & emergency services have always been clear & ready to go 24 hours after a storm.

[gnarator]

@rbroome

Until people find out that the compressors the gas company uses to keep the gas pressure up are/were electrically powered. Oops. I understand that problem has been addressed around here but up north-worth checking.

Most compressors use natural gas as their fuel:

See https://extension.psu.edu/understanding-natural-gas-compressor-stations#:~:text=As%20natural%20gas%20moves%20through,flow%20of%20gas%20to%20market

Your local gas company may not have compressors, but their supplier (transmission company) will, so you could see what kind of compressors they use.

[mixdenny]

@Broomstick

My employer is a private company. Each store has emergency generators, huge things far larger than any whole-house generator (unless you have a house like Bill Gates, maybe). They are tested regularly. They don’t always work when tested. I can verify, however, that they have worked every time we’ve suffered an actual power failure in the area. It’s a sort of blink-and-you-miss-it interval, except that one time it took until a count of three for it to kick in (three seconds is supposed to be the maximum).

Our critical buildings had a room full of batteries for the UPS which gave them 10 minutes or so to allow the generators to take over.

[rbroome]

@gnarator

Your local gas company may not have compressors, but their supplier (transmission company) will, so you could see what kind of compressors they use.

Thanks, I understand! As I remember it (Katrina in 2005), there was equipment on the gas lines that didn’t like being without power for several days. The neighbor telling to story didn’t know the details and referred to the pumps, but from what I remember it was either the electronics controlling the pumps or smaller pumps inline with the local distribution system. I am sure it wasn’t the big pumps used on the transmission lines as seen in the picture.

In any event, it was a rude shock to them when their nice big safe generator stopped working after a couple of days because the lines didn’t have power. Almost as bad as the gas lines in New Orleans-they were flooded when the city went under. A couple of breaks and the water filled up the lines (no gas was flowing of course). The gas company had no protocols for cleaning out the lines and rectifying them for use. It apparently had never happened before.