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Natural gas, propane. What's the right choice?
You now know, from Step 1, what size is suitable for your home.
But what fuel is right for your application? What are the choices? Is cost a factor?
How do you decide?
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Let's take a look at whether a natural gas or propane electric generator is the right answer for you. Or, perhaps, one of the other fuels might be suitable... |
| Gasoline: |
Why not? It's readily available. Not too expensive. Perhaps you could even siphon some out of your car in an emergency!
Sorry. Bad idea. Gasoline is very dangerous. It vaporizes easily and that vapor explodes when around flames or sparks (like a generator engine!). Besides, gasoline is prohibited for home standby use by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) code, for obvious reasons. |
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| Diesel: |
An excellent choice. Diesel does not explode (it burns). But it is a much larger air polluter than other available fuels. More importantly for the home owner, it is a "batch" fuel. This means there isn't a continuously supplied for the engine. You must fill a tank; then refill the tank when it is empty (not a good idea to have an empty tank when a power outage occurs!). |
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Propane: |
Note: This is technically known as Liquid Petroleum Gas (LPG). Propane is also a batch fuel. It is relatively safe, even though it explodes, because of the careful NFPA practices followed in its use. It's a good choice if you already have a Propane tank on your property. |
| Natural Gas: |
Natural Gas (N/G) is commonly supplied to your home, through a pipe, by your local utility company. While N/G does explode, these N/G installations are quite common and, therefore, the installers are well practiced in careful, safe installations (most homes have an N/G hot water heater or furnace). And the beauty of N/G, as a home generator fuel, is that it is continuously available without any effort at all on the part of the home owner. N/G is, by far, the most common fuel used in home generators. |
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Note about fuel costs: Over a period of time, it costs about the same to use any of these fuels. This makes sense. If any single fuel became relatively less expensive than the others, they would get all the fuel business. And the others would go out of business. This has never happened. |
| Recommendation: Go with N/G for your home generator, unless you have unusual circumstances. |
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