Home generator

[Wind]

We are in our new house now for about a year and my wife thinks we need a standby generator to power the house during a power outage.  An auto-whole house generator would be nice but not willing to pay that much.  Thinking of a PTO type, I have a hand full of tractors that would do the job.  10 or 12KW would be big enough.  It would be just for the home-no other buildings.  What do you think and what works for you?  How reliable are those box store generators?  

[JimMeade]

The hog house and turkey guys might be a good source of info on the PTO generator.  They used to be popular.  I don't know anything about them, myself.

Box store generators - I don't know.  If you need a generator, you need it and can't take a chance.  They need to be run periodically, maybe once a month or once a quarter or whatever.  What fuel?  Own tank?  On natural gas line?  Fuel can get stale or one could run out in a long power outage.

[Wind]

Thanks Jim, I'm staying away from the box store generators and have a 12KW PTO generator coming. I plan on keeping a small tractor here all Winter to push snow and run the PTO gen-set if I need to.  It is ice storms that will take the power out for long periods of time around here.  Beans are done around here and about 30% of the corn to go.  

[r822308000410]

Personally have a 15KW, PTO, my understanding is you need about 2HP per KW.  I went with a PTO gen, because I figured at least one of 4 tractors would start and I didn't need another 'one trick pony' engine to maintain.

Larry

[Wind]

Just the other day I ran my new PTO 12KW generator for the first time. That was my thought too, 3 or 4 tractors around to do the job.