Best Generator Options

Best Generator Options

Today we're going to be taking a look at different generator options and how to pick one that fits your needs. So whenever you're looking for a generator, there are going to be four major things you're going to need to consider. The first one is going to be how much power do you need The second one is going to be if you need an inverter generator or not. The third one is going to be the fuel type you're going to be using. Lastly is going to be the noise level and whether you're going to be okay with a fluctuating noise or a steady level.A lot of people, the first thing they think about with a generator is how loud it's going to be, and before we can get into that, we need to figure out our power needs. To figure that out, we're going to have to figure out everything that we're going to be plugging into our generator and add up all of the wattage that it'll take.Now there is starting watts and running watts.

So we need to figure out the starting watts of everything we're plugging in and add it all together, and make sure our generator has at least that much, and then figure out the running watts for each device, and again, make sure our generator can power all of them simultaneously.So to figure all that out, we're going to have to find the starting watts and running watts of everything that we're going to be plugging into our generator. Typically, most appliances and the items are going to have a little bit higher wattage to start it and a little bit lower to keep it running. So for example, if we have an air conditioner that's going to take 1800 watts to start, a refrigerator that's going to take 1600 watts to start, and a drill that's going to take 600 watts to start, we're going to need a total of 4,000 starting watts.The same air conditioner, may only use 1200 running watts. The refrigerator will use 800 running watts, and the drill is going to use 450 running watts, which means our generators is going to need a total of 2,450 running watts.Not everything is going to be listed in wattage. You may have things that just tells you the volts and how much amperage it is, but an easy way to find the watts, if we take the voltage times the amperage, that'll give us the wattage for that device.The next thing to consider is if you need an inverter generator or not, and that's going to come whether you're going to be supplying power to a lot of sensitive electronics, because an inverter is going to protect them a lot better.All generators are going to work on a basic principle.

We're going to have a motor that's going to power an alternator that's going to send out the power, whether it be 120 or 240, just like a house outlet, for our inverter generators are going to work a little bit differently. Our inverter generators are going to work along the same principles, but then it's going to take that 110 or 240 power, convert it back to 12 volts, clean the power and then convert it back to 110 or 240. So we're going to have a constant clean power, opposed to any kind of surges we get with regular generators.With that being said, our inverter generators typically aren't going to provide the raw power that a regular generator will, but there are some upsides aside from protecting sensitive electronics. The design of our inverter generator are typically going to have more of a case to them, so it's going to cut down on a lot of that noise when they're running.That's going to bring us to our next area to look into, and that's going to be fuel type. We're going to have a few different options of what type of fuel is going to run our generators.

We'll have a gas powered generator, and then we'll also have a propane generator or a dual fueled generator.A few benefits of propane is that it's going to be able to store easier than gasoline when we're not using our generator, and when we're running our generator off of propane it's going to have a more steady idle to it, so we won't have that surge of the motor going up and down.That'll bring us to noise, which a lot of people are concerned about when they're looking for a generator. Our propane generators are going to run a little bit smoother than the gasoline ones and not have so much surge in the idol of the motor. They're not necessarily going to be any quieter, but our inverter generators are going to be generally quieter than the traditional generator.Another thing to consider is the portability of the generator. Typically, the smaller ones are going to be easier to move, but they're not going to provide us the power that some of the larger ones are. That's where our kits are going to come into play.

It'll provide us with two generators that we can parallel together to provide us more power than one alone, but we can separate them so we can easily transport one smaller one when we need only a little bit of power.For example, if we're having a family picnic and we only need a little bit of power for maybe some lights or a sound system, we could take this smaller portable one and have enough power, but then if we go camping, we take our RV with us, we can take both of them and have plenty of power to power everything up.Another thing a lot of customers are interested about, especially with motor homes, is if the generator has a 50 amp circuit. Well, with the parallel kits, some of them are going to have that 50 amp circuit, so we can make sure that the motor home is getting full power.Most generators are going to have a pull cord, so we can start the motor up. However, some of them are going to have an electric start. We're going to push a button. Some of them are even going to have a remote start, where we can start our generator from several feet away.Another thing to look at is how many outlets our generator is going to have, to make sure that we have enough and the right kind for everything that we're going to be plugging in.We hope this information has helped you when choosing a generator to suit your needs.