Defrost works by pumping heat outside with the outdoor fan off so the outdoor coil heats up and melts the ice. The electric heaters are not technically needed for this process, but they turn on so the vents don't blow cold air on the occupants of the house during the cycle.
New 5000 Watt Enclosed Dual-Fuel Inverter Generator at Harbor Freight
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Wife doesn't want cold air blowing from the vents in the winter. So no real discussion.
Even without the booster coils one would need a fairly large generator to run the heat pump itself. A lot more than the circulator pump for the oil boiler in my NY house.
They aren't that needed...
Some people disable them, even during defrost.
I have mine disabled, but not during defrost. Even then, I only have half (10kw) of the aux heat coils coming on during defrost.
Your not understanding. Wife does not want cold air blowing from the vents in the winter. There is no discussion. Pick your battles.
I think if the power's out and the alternative is to freeze, in the dark (because the generator CANNOT run the aux heat)...someone might decide that some heat is better than none at all.
I have 20kW of aux heat in my house. A generator large enough to run just that, without all of the other loads, is extremely large and expensive.
Therefore, if the power is out and I must run the heat, from my 8kW generator, the aux heat gets disconnected completely.
Some is better than none at all.
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This is a common misconception. A traditional, brushed generator makes pure sine waves by default. The only impurities are noise from the brushes and, on single-cylinder 4-stroke engines, a slight difference between power and non-power cycles making a slight difference in the strength every other power pulse.
An inverter generator chops a square wave to get close to a theoretical sine wave, with marketing allowing anything under a certain percent distortion to be called "pure". Inverters also lack the "flywheel effect" of a heavy rotating mass so when a new load suddenly comes online everything suffers for a fraction of a second while the electronics try to spool up. This is its own insiduous type of "dirty power."
If you look at the power supplies for the computer equipment, they probably call for 100-240V at 50-60 Hz. They're "switching" power supplies and do fine on dirty power. My concern about running a generator in an emergency is doing damage to stuff like the furnace or well pump... life support systems. And the damage would be from "brownouts" passing too much current through motor windings as they struggle to start. Computers, TVs? Meh. They'll survive.
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But you’re not understanding. His wife hates cold air blowing through vents.
How about no air at all blowing through vents while sitting in the dark?
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