Last summer, during one of several blackouts that hit a Naperville subdivision, neighbors pointed to Dan Kittilsen’s house in amazement.
“As the street went black, everyone was wondering why I still had lights on–as well as why I still had an air conditioning running, a stereo playing and a garage door opener that was functioning,” Kittilsen says.
Kittilsen’s secret wasn’t black magic, but a generator he installed in his home two years ago. When utility company power kicks off, the system kicks on.
“While these power outages are maybe as long as 45 minutes at a time, you wouldn’t believe what an inconvenience they can be,” says Kittilsen, a custom home builder.
Kittilsen is one of a growing number of homeowners who have installed backup generators in their homes to help them weather power outages. Last year’s Y2K fears got people to take a closer look at home generator systems and the machines are coming down in price and becoming more efficient.
Meanwhile, Chicago and other municipalities now require multifamily buildings to invest in emergency lighting systems that kick in during power outages and are run by non-utility company sources such as a generator system.
“Generators have advanced quite a bit in recent years from a technological standpoint,” says Kittilsen. “And they’ve become easier to find.” You can now buy a home generator system at home improvement stores, although they need to be installed by a professional.
In the last few years home generators have become “more customer friendly, especially when it comes to how they look and how they sound,” says Gene Maher, the president of Gen-X of America, a Mundelein-based company that sells and installs home generators.
“They used to be noisy and ugly and run only on diesel fuel,” adds Maher. “Now these units sit unobtrusively outside a house in a nice slick box and they are as quiet as an air-conditioning unit.”
But powerful power-producing systems such as Kittilsen’s Cummins Owens Home Standby System aren’t cheap, costing $8,000 to $12,000 including installation.
Kittilsen thinks the investment was well worth it. “I’ve paid mine off at least five times as far as damage savings to my home,” he says.
Mike Blaze, the operating manager of the Oak Brook Terrace-based Energy Systems Inc., which installs generators fueled by natural gas, agreed. “The most common reason people invest in home generators is because they want to protect their investment in their homes,” he says.
The most typical scenario, he says, is that a generator is used to protect a finished basement. “During a storm, the power often goes out,” Blaze says. “This is the worst possible time to lose power, however, as you need electricity to run sump pumps.”
Sump pumps exhaust rain water, collected in pipes and pits around and in a home, away from the dwelling so the water can’t do damage.
If a sump pump isn’t running, that rain water can back up into the basement. “I would have had as much as three to four feet of water in my basement if my sump pump wasn’t operating,” Kittilsen says. “I have a 4,000- square-foot basement with two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a family room.
“I also know a lot of people with finished basements who would have problems,” he adds. “There’s a lot of home theater systems that would be ruined by water.”
There are numerous other problems that can occur when the power goes out.
In the winter, for example, a lack of power will shut down a natural gas furnace. Electricity is used to run the furnace’s fan unit, which pumps air heated by natural gas throughout the house. Without that heat, the home can face damage such as frozen water pipes.
In warmer weather months, meanwhile, a power outage can ruin literally hundreds of dollars worth of food in a refrigerator and freezer.
Without power, a home is also sans lights, a safety problem.
“And now many people run a home office out of their homes and they can’t afford to be without power for even a short time,” says Blaze.
Without power, most homeowners also can’t open their garages, adds Blaze. “Because many folks don’t know how to open a garage door manually, or maybe they can’t physically, they’re trapped in their homes,” he says.
A generator produces household electricity by burning any one of a number of different fuels: natural gas, propane, diesel or gasoline. While gasoline is the least expensive type of fuel, generators that run on natural gas or propane will burn cleaner and have longer life spans. Natural gas and propane also store easier and safer than gasoline and diesel fuels.
“As a result, natural gas is becoming the fuel of choice,” says Maher.
Inside the generator, the gas fuels an engine, which turns and produces electrical power “much like a generator light does on a moving bicycle wheel,” says Maher.
That power is routed via wiring to the inside of a home and linked to the main electrical distribution panel. When the power from the local utility company goes out, a sensor in that panel starts up the generator. Within a few seconds, generator-produced electricity begins powering the home.
Depending on the size of the generator, the unit can provide power for essential items or provide power for all the electrical needs of the home. For example, a 7,000 watt generator (most home generators are rated by the electric power they put out in kilowatts)–which costs about $7,000–will provide enough electricity to run a furnace, a sump pump, a refrigerator, a water well, an alarm system, a garage door opener, basic lighting and a few other appliances.
Generators are also evolving. Last year, Merrillville, Ind.-based utility company NiSource Inc. and the Institute of Gas Technology unveiled a demonstration unit that creates power by using a fuel processor to transform natural gas or propane into hydrogen, and sending that hydrogen to a fuel cell which creates the electricity.
A scaled-down version of a power-producing system used by manufacturing businesses, the co-generation system is expected to cost several thousand dollars and should be available to the public in a couple of years or so, according to NiSource officials.
“As generator technology becomes even more advanced, as people become more cognizant of the fact that utility companies aren’t as reliable as they can be, and as homes become more dependent on electricity to run things such as computers, I believe the majority of homeowners will turn to a backup generator,” says Maher. “I think you’ll see them outside of a home as much as you see an air-conditioning unit.”
