Considering a whole-home solution, but had a thought and wanted to see if anyone here had an idea.

In a scenario like Feb 2021 where the gas supply to power plants was cut down drastically, would I have any issue getting gas to my house to power my gen? I assume that my local utility has some amount of gas stored locally that moves to demand, but not sure about that.

I don't think nat gas supply was an issue.

some light reading for anyone interested: Uri Report NatGas

I think I've answered my own question at this point, that the supply of gas to residential customers would have a lag from any shortages in production and not be an issue for something like this.

If anyone had a whole-home generator during that storm, I'd be interested to hear if you had any issues at all or if things continued as normal for you.

Generally, home nat gas is prioritized due to keeping people warm. Industry has to pull back usage, unless they generate their own inside their fence.

There was an article back in 2021 that mentioned it. That's why LNG has to stop or refineries as power plants needed the gas.

~egon

I did not

Winter Storm Uri definitely had nat gas prioritized to residential meters. Any freeze event like that will be the same.

Our municipality in the hill country couldn't keep up with natural gas demand in February 2021. There was only gas flow when the electricity was off. When the electricity came back on, everyone's furnaces kicked on and the gas pressure went to essentially zero.

My neighbor across the street had recently spent $25k on a Generac whole home generator powered by natural gas. It was useless during the Feb 2021 freeze. He was really upset.

Picard said:

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Our municipality in the hill country couldn't keep up with natural gas demand in February 2021. There was only gas flow when the electricity was off. When the electricity came back on, everyone's furnaces kicked on and the gas pressure went to essentially zero.

My neighbor across the street had recently spent $25k on a Generac whole home generator powered by natural gas. It was useless during the Feb 2021 freeze. He was really upset.

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good info--aren't there dual fuel natural gas + propane units? So if you bury a nice sized propane tank you could have best of both worlds?

We went propane fired for our whole home solution. Even went so far as to install a second propane tank for the generator alone. We can keep the propane filled all year long with monthly top offs. We are pretty comfortable with where we are right now.

jtp01 said:

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We went propane fired for our whole home solution. Even went so far as to install a second propane tank for the generator alone. We can keep the propane filled all year long with monthly top offs. We are pretty comfortable with where we are right now.

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How does that work out cost-wise?