The gas-powered generator, whether gasoline or diesel powered, is largely scorned within the prepping and survival community.

Our basic argument against it takes two parts. First, running a gas-powered generator is expensive, especially for anything more than a few hours. Secondly, the supply of available fuel for these generators will diminish rapidly in a post-disaster world. It might be able to provide electricity for a few days, but available fuel will likely be consumed within a week, except for small private hordes that people won’t let go of, except at exorbitant prices.

The replacement for the gasoline powered generator seems to be something called the “solar generator.” There are a number of different companies making and selling these devices to the prepping community, touting their products as the solution to all one’s electrical power problems. For two to three thousand dollars, one can have the latest in power generation, ensuring that they’ll have ample electrical power in the event of a TEOTWAWKI event.

But is our thinking correct on this? Let’s take a fresh, and more importantly, impartial, look at the subject.

Solar Generators

The solar generator, by any brand, is a mysterious black box, with dials, switches and electrical outlets on some “control” panel. It stores electrical power, which is then dispensed when needed. There is also provision for attaching solar panels to the generator, recharging it. Some come with one or two solar panels in the package; others come without.

Okay, so just what is this device?

Inside the solar generator one can find a battery or possibly even two batteries. They are most likely to be deep-cycle lead-acid batteries, although I’m sure there are some units around which are made with Lithium-Ion batteries. Those would likely be both more expensive, and lighter, than their lead-acid counterparts. How big the battery is will determine just how much power they can store and ultimately provide in the case of an emergency.

In addition to the battery or batteries, the solar generator is going to contain two other devices. They might be integrated into one; but I’m going to deal with them based on their function. The first of these is known as a solar charge controller; a fancy name for a battery charger that is designed with the idea of receiving its power from a solar panel. Interestingly, the same battery charger works for small wind turbines as well.

The other device inside the black box is a voltage inverter. This takes the 12-volt power stored in the battery and boosts it to 120-volts, while converting it from DC power (all batteries are DC or direct-current) to AC power (alternating current). One of the things that nobody ever seems to mention, when talking about these units or solar power in general, is that to boost 12-volts to 120-volts, it is necessary to feed the voltage inverter ten times the amount of current one hopes to receive at the output. In other words, to get 3.5 amps of power, at 120-volts AC (enough to power most refrigerators), it is necessary to put in 35 amps of DC power from the battery.

Each of these solar generators is different and I have no way of knowing just what battery capacity they have. But just to understand things better, let’s make an assumption that the battery has a charge capacity of 200 amp-hours. That’s a pretty big deep-cycle lead-acid battery. With that being our imaginary case, just what does it mean for the user?

Using our refrigerator example, we would be drawing 35 amps of power from that solar generator, whenever the refrigerator was in its cooling cycle. Since that’s usually about 1/3 of the time, that means that we’d be pulling 35 amps of power out of that battery one hour out of every three. With a 200 amp-hour battery, we’d totally discharge the battery in about 18 hours.

Ah! But that’s where the solar part of the system comes in. Solar panels are connected to the system to recharge that battery. But just how long does that take?

Of course, that depends on how many solar panels are connected to the system and how much power each solar panel puts out. As with the battery capacity, I’m sure that this varies from manufacturer to manufacturer. But being generous, let’s say that they are putting out 400 watts, a fairly typical output claimed for good solar panels today.

Okay, to convert 400 watts to amps, we divide it by the voltage, 12 volts. That means that under ideal conditions, we should get almost as much power out of those solar panels as we are using to run the refrigerator. Over a period of 6 hours, the solar panels should be able to fully charge the battery. Considering that solar panels can only produce their rated power for about 8 hours per day, under ideal conditions, that 400-watt panel should be enough to keep the solar generator charged, as long as there are no cloudy days and nothing else is plugged into that solar generator.

Of course, that’s a purely theoretical situation. In reality, you’d probably be running more than just your refrigerator off the solar generator. You might be running a well pump, charging your phone, running a few lights and running a few other electronic devices. If so, you need more than that solar generator can provide.

By the way, this is essentially a small solar power system, with battery backup. If you’re a do-it-yourselfer, you could probably put your own together for a whole lot less than companies charge for them. Yours might not have the fancy black box, but it should work just as well.

What About Gas Generators?

Okay, now that we’ve looked at the competition to gas generators, let’s look at gas generators. As I already mentioned, the big argument against gas generators is the availability and cost of fuel. That argument is based on long-term survival situations, such as we would encounter after a TEOTWAWKI event.

But that argument is at best flawed. Most of the disasters any of us are going to face aren’t long-term survival situations; but rather short-term ones. Whether one is snowed in for a week after a blizzard or loses power due to a hurricane, they are unlikely to be without power for more than a week. In such a situation, we really don’t need a long-term survival solution, to take care of a short-term survival problem. A generator might just be what’s called for in such a situation.

Gasoline generators have two major advantages over solar generators. First, they produce more power. Second, they cost less. A number of 4,000 to 6,000 watt gasoline powered generators are available for less than $1,000. By comparison to the solar powered generators we were just talking about, they don’t have a battery storing electricity; but produce 10 times as much power, or more, upon demand; day or night; rain or shine.

The better gasoline generators are the inverter generators, which use less gasoline to produce the same amount of power than more traditional gasoline generators. They do this by producing AC power, which is much less stable, coming right off the generator, than DC current is. They then convert that power to DC, which is an extremely simple process, then back to AC again. The final result is AC power that is extremely stable, but having been produced using less gasoline.

One of the major ways that inverter generators save gasoline is to produce power on an “on demand” basis. In other words, if you’re only using 1,000 watts of power, it’s not going to be running full-bore, like it would have to, in order to produce 4,000 watts of power. That’s much different than traditional gasoline generators, making them worth the extra cost.

With less gasoline consumption, a prepper can choose to either store less gasoline or get more mileage out of the gasoline they store. That’s a bit of a tricky choice to make, as it is not easy to store gasoline for any extended period of time. You can add fuel stabilizer to it, which will up the storage time from six months to a year; but beyond that, the gasoline starts to lose its potency.

Keep in mind that how the gasoline is stored makes a difference. Most people today are storing gasoline in plastic gas cans. The problem with that, is that the plastic that the gas cans are made of is a petroleum product. So, hydrocarbons from the gasoline can leech through the plastic, lessening its potential stored energy. However, testing shows that if that same gasoline is stored in metal gas cans, it retains its potency as much as three times as long!

I keep gasoline in a 55-gallon steel drum. That not only allows me to store more gasoline than I could in gas cans; but I’m storing it in a metal container, helping to maintain its potency. The drum sits horizontally for easier drainage, with the larger bung hole towards the top, where it is used to fill the drum. The smaller bung hole has a non-sparking, brass spigot, allowing me to get gasoline whenever I want.

I cycle my gas, pulling out gas for my lawn mower, chainsaw and even my car. Then I go to the gas station to buy fresh gas, refilling my drum. In this way, I’m extending the life of my gasoline supply, ensuring that while it might not be totally fresh, enough of it is, that it remains usable at all times. I figure that I have enough gasoline to run my inverter generator for almost two weeks.

Written by

Bill White is the author of Conquering the Coming Collapse, and a former Army officer, manufacturing engineer and business manager. More recently, he left the business world to work as a cross-cultural missionary on the Mexico border. Bill has been a survivalist since the 1970s, when the nation was in the latter days of the Cold War. He had determined to head into the Colorado Rockies, should Washington ever decide to push the button. While those days have passed, the knowledge Bill gained during that time hasn’t. He now works to educate others on the risks that exist in our society and how to prepare to meet them. You can send Bill a message at editor [at] survivopedia.com.

Latest comments
  • Understand the relationship of generators to preparedness first by deciding what you mean by preparedness since opposite preparedness concepts are commonly conflated and particularly easily because these two share the same root word being preparedness.

    There’s “emergency preparedness” and then there’s “preparedness” of various varieties. Sounds the same, yet they’re opposites. I’ll illustrate by giving extreme examples related to the generator.

    Some stray into the realm of arranging to be inconvenienced the least by a power failure. They’ll still have lights and air-conditioning and the rest while their block is in the dark for an hour up to a few days. I liken this to show-off and “Keeping up with the Jones’s.” The opposite is ambiguous in it’s sharing the same word “preparedness.” But preparedness for what?

    If power is going to come back on in hours or days, I’ll live and I certainly won’t divert my assets that go into real preparedness into “preparedness” to not be inconvenienced or to impress neighbors.

    In sharp contrast such as a hefty Cronal Mass Discharge or Electromagnetic Pulse of warfare that shuts down the power grid for years, I certainly want to be “prepared” for change with my preparedness assets spent that way. I wouldn’t want to burn fuel suddenly worth a gold coin per gallon until it’s gone in the first two weeks! And then what? Man has lived for lots of thousands of years without generators!

    Extrapolate the rest and post it in comments and I will join the conversation.

    [email protected]

  • Indeed, too many preppers are focused on a TEOTWAWKI event, when in actuality, most disasters are NOT the end of the world. Yes, the fuel will run out in a long term outage, but the power provided by the genny does two things; it keeps the stuff in the fridge and freezer cold for a while longer. This allows you to use that food up FIRST. It may also allow you to convert the food to a less perishable state by doing things like salting down meat, dehydrating, or canning. After that, the fridge and freezer are out of the equation and don’t need power anymore. In a long term event the genny will also provide a bridge, of sorts; power to keep you up and running whilst you figure out how to do certain things without power. At this point the genny can be run for maybe an hour or two a day to take care of charging things up and the like. I read a story about Pitcairn’s Island, the place where the mutineers of the HMS Bounty ended up. Their descendants still live there. At the time of the article’s writing, the island had very limited power producing capability. The generator was run for three hours a day. Activities needing power were scheduled during that time. The rest of the day, the residents were on their own.

    If you can afford it, go with a two-generator approach; a big one that can handle pretty much everything, and a small one for tings like charging batteries and running small power tools. Use the big one, if necessary, first. Then, as loads are shed, go to the small one. A 1Kw genny, run for a couple of hours a day, will charge all the stuff you need, and will take a LONG TIME to chew through, say, twenty gallons of gas, which is the maximum allowable residential storage in many locales.

    Remember too, folks, that an inverter hooked up to your car’s battery, engine running, creates an inverter generator, is MUCH cheaper than a full-on generator, stores in the car’s trunk, and can get you around your possible fuel storage limitations SAFELY. Just remember to keep your vehicles’ tanks FULL. Also, be sure to TEST your inverter on the car with its anticipated load PRIOR to needing it, to be sure that the car’s alternator can handle the load of the inverter!

  • No one talked about propane powered generators. My generators are duel fuel. Yes , I lose about 700 watts with propane, but propane will last forever. Use gas when you have the big loads and as you eat the frozen food and no longer need the extra watts, go to propane.. I store gas in 55 gal drums and I have them about 6 feet in the ground. Keeps the temp to about 70 degrees and safer than storing inside shed. At my BOL I have 1500 gals of propane for cooking, hot water and aux heating in the winter time if I need it. I can also run my generators for a very long time if I have to.

  • How do you get the gas from the gas station to your 55 gallon drum, 5 gallon containers? And, won’t the metal drum rust faster buried in the ground?

    • The first filling took a couple of trips with 5-gallon cans. Since then, I just replace the gas I use for my yard equipment, about five gallons at a time. This keeps the fuel fresh. I’ve been doing this for around ten years now, and have had no trouble with the quality of the gas. You may find it easier to use 2.5-gallon gas cans, as they’re easier to transport and lift.

      The author of the article said nothing about burying the drum. He stores his horizontally, probably in a rack of some kind. I store mine vertically on cinder blocks in the well-ventilated pass-through in my barn. I also have my drum tied off to the wall of the barn to keep it from toppling in an earthquake. I use a crank pump to extract the fuel I need. The cinder blocks keep the drum well off the ground to keep the bottom from rusting out from the outside. True, the drum can rust from the inside, and if it does, having it elevated off the ground will make it easy for me to see any seepage. If that happens, I have enough five-gallon cans stored to transfer the fuel out of the drum. Again, I’ve been storing fuel this way for ten years. So far, so good. The possibility of rust inside the drum can be reduced by filling it with QUALITY (dry) gas and keeping the drum FULL. Condensation and rust from humidity in the air can only happen if there’s metal exposed to the air.. No bare metal, no condensation. No condensation, no additional water in the fuel. No water, no rust.

    • OK; I see where you got the drums buried in the ground. I was looking a the article and not the comment above yours. I wouldn’t keep my drums either buried or in a pit. Buried drums WILL rust through. Keeping them in a pit may keep the temperature more stable, but it will allow vapors to build up around the drums. Not a good thing….

    • I dug up my drums during the Covid lock down and found no rust on the outside of the drums. Before I put them in the ground the first time I painted them with Rustolem paint. Since I had them back out I put another coat of the same paint on them. Before I dug them out, they had been in the ground for 7 years. To fill them I have a 15 gal fuel tank on wheels that I use. I have a low voltage pump to get the fuel out of the drums. As for the inside, I used an inspection light with a camera and I could find no rust. I use the fuel every 6 to 8 months and refill. I don’t know if this will work for everyone but it seems to work OK for me. I call it my Gas Garden. I am thinking of getting a military fuel trailer that holds about 500 gallons and using that to fill my drums. Plus if I did have to bug out I will have 500 gal of fuel. That has to be worth a lot of trade goods. Thoughts?

  • are there any specific brands or models , in each category , that the more knowledgeable and experienced users can share .
    good -Bad etc. any routine parts or consumables that need to have to fix or to keep running ie, troubleshooting and on hand needed to remedy.

    thanks in advance for reply

  • I think most people will say Honda makes the best Gen’s. I know a lot of RVer’s who swear by the Champion brand. I have a 7500 watt Champion That has over 1k hours on it and it runs and outputs like new. I also have a Generac propane 5000 watt that I have about 300 hours on it. I had both load tested last Feb.
    As far as spare parts, a tune up kit and spare oil and filters are a must I feel. If you can do it, a engine rebuild kit with piston, rings, bearings,valves and springs, recoil starter and the list goes on and on. How good you are at small engine repair will tell you what you need. A tune up kit is easy to do as the oil and filter change. The oil will need changing every 300 to 400 hours of use or sooner if the engine book calls for it. I hope this helps.

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