On Sat, 20 Sep 2003 19:29:00 -0400, "Michael Willems"
wrote in message
:

I am building a house as we speak. This is what I am doing:

- Additional panel that switches over and powers a portion of the house
- Yet to be decided: "auto switchover and generator that autostarts", or
"manual switchover and generator htat needs to be kicked".
- Propane powered generator (500 gallon tank of propane feeds our heating
-
this is rural so no natural gas, plus I like the independence)
- A big UPS for the X10 controller, fridge, and a light in each room
- Ham radio (VA3MVW) for comms

Michael

Last I knew, propane-powered generators still used carburetors. (This may
have changed in the last decade). Propane-powered generators may need more
than 1.5 times the rated steady-state KW of a generator powered by a
diesel or other fuel-injected engine to have the same resistance to voltage
sags from the start-up of heavy loads like refrigerators, AC, heaters and
so on. These sags can cause your electronic gear to reset.

My experience was that this problem was not solved for continuous use by
conventional, small UPS's because the sensitivity of UPS's was such that
they tripped excessively and wore down their batteries more quickly than
they could be recharged.

The solution in my case was to use a diesel generator with a large flywheel
and UPS's with built-in magnetic conditioning (Ferrupps) and adjustable
sensitivity to voltage and (especially) frequency variations.

A different solution, which I would implement now, would be the one I
suggested in another post to this thread, viz: fit PC's and HA and other
electronic equipment with DC-DC power supplies.

HTH ... Marc

www.ECOntrol.com