Piccolo Pete said:
I probably didn't make the best choice with my Coleman 1500 watter, but it
drives my tools well, only cost me about $300, and runs a few (5? 7?) hours on
1 gallon. The biggest problem is every time I finally get around to using it,
I have to service the carburetor float valve.
In your case, 1500 watts was probably a fairly good choice. General rule:
Use a small generator to run small loads, load to 50 to 80% of long-term
capacity. 1500 watts should be sufficient start most any refrigerator, which is
one of the basic items you want to power in a power outage. I have an old
600-watt Honda that dies if I connect it to my 'fridge...almost usless!
What is really inefficient is if you need to run that generator for several
hours to run your little battery charger at 2 or 3 hundred watts. In just fuel
cost, you would be paying about $4.00 for about 10 cents worth of electricity.
Because it can idle down to a lower speed, that Yamaha could do the same job for
perhaps half the gas. Still inefficient, but still a huge improvement. In your
situation, you would never save the extra cost of the generator.
That is disturbing... I've been wanting to switch from gasoline and propane
to natural gas.
Natural gas is a great way to go! In the last three hurricanes, our supply
has not been interupted for even a moment. Unlike gasoline or propane, you
don't need to stand in line to get it, and you don't have to pay for it until
the moment when you need it. (I also keep a few days of propane on hand for
that Onan) Hopefully, I have the Onan's problems sorted out now.
Question - are those inverter generators pure sine wave or modified sine wave?
My guess is modified.
The ones I have seen are sine wave. (High frequency digital PWM) I wonder
about some of the Asian clones though.
Vaughn