I set up generators to operate off of multiple fuels. Been doing so for the past 20 years. Now you can buy them already set up.
So in one case I purchased a cargo container, a 20 foot'er and plunked it down on the side of an apartment property along the side housing the Natural Gas Meters. I made a cut out and installed a 10,000 Watt Tri-Fuel Generator, converted it myself from just gasoline to operator off of Propane, Natural Gas or Gasoline. This is an Inverter Generator enclosed in a soundproofing shell and operates at around 65 db at half-load.
So the City was replacing over-head wires and the power was going to be out for around 10 hours.
So I asked my 9 tenants if the wanted power during the outage, sharing the cost of power with everyone. None of he tenants offered me use of their natural gas from their meter to give everyone power. I have a sub-meter at the generator to record how much gas I'll be using.
The last time I took power from the Buildings Gas Meter (used to provide natural gas to the laundry dryer and house water meter). When I asked my tenants to pitch in and pay 1/10 the cost each, they refused.
So this time if my tenants wanted power I was going to use their gas and have everyone pitch in. So during the 10 hours with no power, I gave my manager free power so her food didn't spoil and she had light, heat and a pleasant time, while everyone else suffered.
One tenant had a Jackery Power Back up Battery, but it was 260 watts. Only powered her lights for 12 minutes. Another tenant had their own generator, but the fuel was old and gummed up their carburetor.
In one of my 5 unit, when the power transformer blew out, I have all those tenants emergency power from a 22500 watt generator. I needed to enter their unit to shut down any battery computer,etc. One tenant chewed me out for entering her unit without permission. I called her on her call but she was too buys to pick up or call back. The next time the City scheduled a power outage, I did not do any thing for this tenant, she again won't pick up my calls. When she got home, her 65 inch big screen TV was toast and her computer too. Now having lost $5k in personal property, she learned to thane me instead of mouthing off.
--47.155.xx.xxx
Shared Generator Multifam (by LordZen [MA]) Nov 18, 2023 9:28 PM
Shared Generator Multifam (by James [GA]) Nov 19, 2023 1:12 AM