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Comment by mauvehaus | Hacker News Reader

There are probably two good reasons for this:

1) Getting natural gas plumbed to your generator is expensive.

2) If you're running this generator for an extended period of time, things have pretty much by definition gone to shit and aren't working as designed. You have a lot fewer dependencies to go fill a couple of jerrycans with gas at the nearest gas station (that has both gas and power to pump it [0]) than you have to restore piped natural gas service to your property.

[0] And if a gas station loses power, getting it hooked back up restores its utility to everyone, whereas restoring power or natural gas service to a home only restores its utility to the person living there. Prioritizing gas stations over private homes makes a lot of sense.

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Your second point depends on your threat model. Personally my threat model is a wind or ice storm taking down the aerial electrical lines in my area (SE Michigan). The natural gas lines are all buried and the pumping stations are powered by natural gas so are inherently more reliable.

If your threat model involves civilization deteriorating to the point where natural gas stops working then sure, a generator with fuel storage on site probably makes more sense. I'd argue that gasoline is the worst of available options though. Diesel and propane are much more shelf stable and typically more reliable than small gasoline engines.

> a generator with fuel storage on site probably makes more sense

Storing fuel is dangerous in general, but I believe that liquefied gas is more dangerous. It is more tricky. For example you need to store it in a ventilated environment, to prevent gas buildup. If you turned wrong nut you'll may be not able to turn if back due to pressure.[1] It can be treated safely, but it much more tricky that with liquid fuel.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzdnUZReoLM

With propane, there is also the problem of the vaporization rate being very low at winter temperatures. I've got a small 2500W (1850W continuous) dual-fuel generator that I had expected to be able to run off of a 20lb propane tank. It didn't work at all when I actually needed it (surprise!), and I ended up just running on gasoline and having to go out to get more. It has since been working fine off of 3 tanks teed together, although I still haven't seen middle of the winter arctic blast temperatures with that set up yet.

You might need a horizontal tank.

Liquid Propane requires surface space to “gasify”, and more space the lower the temp. That’s (one reason) why propane “pigs” are horizontal cylinders.

Unfortunately, there aren’t many small horizontal tanks.

Yeah, I researched it after the surprise. Practically for as much propane as I use, it didn't feel worth it to look at larger tanks (there's a price jump, larger ones still have limited lifespan, and smaller is easy to transport/refill). Plus I already had several 20lb tanks kicking around, so teeing them together was the straightforward option.

Down the line I figure I'll be building some sort of generator "shed", and perhaps look at using the generator exhaust to warm the tanks. A loop from the heating system would positively solve the problem, but that feels like way too big of a circular dependency.

It used to be true that the pumping stations themselves were powered by gas, but this is no longer guaranteed because some have been replaced by cheaper electrical pumps.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S104061902...

Many people who use natural gas in the mountains of NC/TN right now are without any access because even the buried infrastructure there got destroyed.

There's not very much that you can do against that particular threat model other than not live there, but one of the big reasons that the area is so popular with tourists is that it's easily accessible to most people (you can easily get to Gatlinburg or Asheville within a day's drive from pretty much anywhere you would consider "the southeast US"), it's pretty, and in summer you can escape the oppressive heat without having to go to the upper Midwest or the Rockies.

Massive landslides and floods will wipe out your natural gas lines, your propane tanks, your wind and solar generators, your battery backups...

Sure, and now that their threat model includes devastating landslides they will probably make different choices.

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