Originally Posted By: SaturnIonVue
Fuel supply is the largest single issue. If the power is out, and you need to generate your own, where do you get "mo'gas" from? The gas stations in your area and probably in surronding areas, as well, will most likely have no electricty to run their pumps. Another issue has to do with storage and purchase price of gas. Many generators will consume at least 5+ gallons of fuel per 10-hour day even with moderate useage. If the power is out for 7 to 10+ days (or more) you will need (let's say a 10 days supply) approximately 50+ gallons of gas. How and where are you going to store 50 gallons of gas? Outside somewhere? It probably will get stolen. Inside the house or garage? An explosively extreme fire hazard! Lots of people don't have the up-front money to buy 5 or more 5-gal gas containers and even 10-5gal containers give you only 50 gallons of gas--which can easily total up together for around $175 to $200. Then if the power is restored, if you're so lucky, two days later then you have 40 gallons of gas to use up and store until it can be used up in your car. Been there and done that.
There are details about these failures that aren't being reported. Like, "the generator worked fine until we ran out of gas" details.
For Katrina, at the place where I work, we lost $4.5 million worth of inventory due to generator "failure." Which was not really the case, since the generator's fuel supply (natural gas) was shut off to prevent flooded houses nearbly from catching fire or blowing up due to pilot lights going out. The best layed plans of mice and men often...don't work out! The generator was a 20KW commercial product (Genrac) with a 4cyl water-cooled engine running NG, which was the only general fail point in the set up barring refrigeration equipment failure, etc. Anyway, we survived Katrina, and the flood itself, but couldn't control for the NG shutoff.
Personally, I hedged my bets this year at home by buying a Tri-fuel 16HP, 10KW portable generator wired into the house. I have natural gas as a primary source of fuel, propane as a secondary source (safer storage) and lastly--gasoline. For a Cat 1 storm, I probably will stay home, Cat 2 or more...We're outta here! I'll have a set up working until the power is restored.
So when they rebuilt did they go with propane or diesel. If its purely for backup, the running cost for fuel is not very important, but you do have to pay for it up front.