Category: Home Power

Dear Editor: I tip my hat to Y. Sam! In my opinion, he has absolutely hit the jackpot as far as resources to have on your property. Having oil and gas even opens up the possibility of home distillation of gasoline and diesel fuel. One aspect he didn’t mention: I was wondering if the gas from his wells is ‘wet’ enough to produce any casing-head gasoline? [A condensate, commonly called drip gasoline.] In addition to converting modern engines and vehicles to run on natural gas, don’t forget that different types of engines were built specifically to run on natural gas. …

James, I wanted to offer a few more thoughts on DoD generators.  Most of the generators I found on Government Liquidations were Mil Std Generators.  This family of generators was designed in the 1970s and manufactured into late 1980s to early 1990s.  The DoD is selling of the generators because they are old, and compared to newer DoD generators they consume more fuel, require more regular maintenance (PMCS), are less reliable and are more expensive to repair if you can get the parts.   The Mil Std Family are tough generators designed to run in environmental extremes.  They are not …

James: In response to buying military gensets, I wouldn’t. I have owned quite a few of them and my view is they take a really good genset and make it so complex its hard to work on let alone get parts for it. The wiring is usually the problem, very complex. I purchased a [commercial] 6.5 Kubota last year and it is a super gen set. I run it on Bio Diesel and it cost about 10 cents per hr to run. One good place to look for these is the Light Towers web site. Check tool rental places for sales. …

JWR, Thanks for the recent post mentioning GovLiquidation.com-listed auctions in response to a reader’s question about concertina wire. While browsing the site, I found lots of generator sets (“gensets“) offered and I am wondering if there are any caveats a buyer should be aware of before purchasing (besides the long drive to retrieve a purchase). Thanks for all you do for the SurvivalBlog community. – G.R. in Texas JWR Replies: Military surplus (“milsurp“) gensets are generally a bargain. But unfortunately, the days of incredibly cheap milsurp generator auctions is gone. This is because the scrap copper merchants will now be there …

Some of the most common things that we stock up on for short term emergencies are batteries. Many of our important tools need electrical power to work. Flashlights, radios, many power tools, and night vision gear– essentially anything that uses DC electricity–would need batteries. For Bug Out Bags and short-term situations batteries are almost always included and could save your life.   Virtually any situation lasting less than a few years would be fine with batteries.  You can have a hand or pedal generator, solar or wind, et cetera, to charge your batteries.   But what happens in a TEOTWAWKI situation?  Where …

Hello Jim, I enjoyed the article regarding off-grid power by Roger A. I’d like to add a few points  about the elimination of phantom loads and the use of inverters. As defined by the author, “phantom loads are created by appliances that have been designed to still need electricity while nominally switched off.” The elimination of these phantom loads reduces electrical needs in two ways; by eliminating the power needed by the appliance and the potential of being able to turn off the inverter. As pointed out in the article, inverters draw an average of 25 watts just to operate. …

“Line Loss” is often mentioned when discussing alternative energy systems, but that is just one of several significant losses. This article will describe five distinct types of losses. In an alternative energy system that incorporates a battery or battery bank, the first electrical loss is within the batteries themselves as they discharge, this is called the Puekert exponent. This loss increases with the aging of the batteries. Look at it this way: If you had a 500 gallon tank of water and you used 200 gallon a day you would have to replace 200 gallons every day or 400 gallons …

I am currently working in the Alternative Energy industry after retiring from a 21-year career with the military.  As part of my Vocational rehabilitation, the military allowed me to choose my future career.  As a long time reader of SurvivalBlog and a Bible-believing Christian, I saw the importance of prepping.  This includes living off grid. Alternative energy seems to be emerging as a buyer beware market.  You can see many manufacturers prey on fear claiming that their systems can run your fridge, furnace, freezer and well pump during any grid down event. This is simply an impossibility, a typical house …

Jim, I’m a retired U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer who has taken restoration carpentry as my second career.  I’ve been following you for a couple years now and very much appreciate what you’re doing. To those ends, I received a link to this article from Fine Homebuilding and thought it might be interesting and perhaps useful to fellow preppers.  Of particular interest to me was the interactive maps from NREL.  One can point their mouse to a particular point on the U.S. map (or to pre-selected points on the global map) and then load the location data into NREL’s PVWatts …