More Winter prepping vs Off grid options

More on our winter preparation adventures. This time we're adding a whole-house generator. I posted previously about our firewood gathering and preparing for winter. Well, when the weather gets to -20 and -40 below zero (F) it's good to have multiple (not just two) heat sources.

We were able to get a really good deal on this generator. Our electrician had ordered one for somebody else last year, and then they cancelled last minute. Rather than eat all the shipping costs, having to store it, or hanging onto it trying to sell, he offered it to us at cost for taking it off his hands last year. It's taken us over 6 months to get installed, but it's finally up and running.

This is the buried propane tank lid/fill access.

The generator runs on Propane. Actually, it's dual fuel with a simple switch of a lever, but we don't have natural gas up here yet. Our propane tank is buried underground and also powers the furnace, gas stove, and on-demand water heater.

The generator is capable of running a sustained 14 KW, which is enough to power the whole house (and garage). We would likely have to turn off the A/C unit if we had an outage in the summer time, but otherwise can handle reasonable normal load for the house.

This is the ATS switch. The main breaker panel is directly on the inside wall.

The propane tank and generator is on one side of the house, but the main electrical panel and Automatic Transfer Switch (ATS) were on the other side of the house. This meant we had to run a super heavy duty wire all the way across the length of the house from that breaker box panel over to the generator. It was cheaper than digging another trench, because the lower level ceiling was a drop ceiling and easily accessible, but still costly in both time and materials.

There's the inner workings. There's actually an electronic control panel on the top there that I can supposedly connect to the wireless network and get status updates and even remote start from my phone app. The wireless network card is on backorder. Due to shipping delays, it did not come with the unit and I have to order separately.

In hindsight, I really wish we had invested in some large solar panels first like @galenkp mentioned in his earlier post. That was the original plan, but we got a bit jumpy on the generator deal (probably $2K under retail cost). We can't do both this year within budget, and had we done solar first, we could have started making money back the first month. This generator is nice for peace of mind, but it really just sits there unless there is an extended outage, vs. the solar which could have provided the near instant cost savings and money return coming back in.

Still researching the solar and would love to be capable of off-grid power at some point, but until then we'll just keep dreaming and drooling over others monthly solar savings and income.

Anyone else have a generator? Would love to hear good/bad stories or what you think about the solar vs. generator.