At the beginning of every hurricane season, most of us give some thought into investing in a stand-by generator. Because you will be shelling out a fair bit of cash for the purchase, you may want to sit down and do a bit of homework before making that call to a supplier.
There are different considerations depending on if you are purchasing for residential or commercial use, and further still if you already occupy your property or are merely in the planning stages. Regardless of where you fit though, your first step is always to think about conservation. And secondly, you should assess what your real needs are during a power outage.
From the point of view of conservation, you simply want to ensure that you have the most efficient lighting and appliances that you can comfortably afford. This is good practice in general, as it will save on your monthly bills and reduce the amount of standby power that you require.
If you are assessing an existing property, you can have your electrician or electrical engineer help you decide what size generator you require. If money is no object, you may just want to buy a system that can power up your entire house or office building.
However, it might be worthwhile to consider what your real needs are in an outage. For example, air-conditioning can easily account for 35 percent of your electrical load so crossing this off your list of essentials might be a good idea. For the homeowner, your list of essentials might be the kitchen, water pump, bedrooms and bathrooms minus the air-conditioning and hot water of course!
For some businesses, air-conditioning is essential as the sheer size of the space means that most building occupants are away from operable windows. In such a case, there may be other ways to minimize the size of the generator required.
If you do prefer a standby system for only essential loads, I would recommend having an engineer redesign your existing electrical system so that you have a separate generator panel that is loaded with the essentials and you utilize an automatic transfer switch so that these are the only areas that receive power during an outage. If you are still developing building plans, consider this option as a way to save on the upfront and operational costs of the generator.
A very green solution would be to utilize photovoltaics and generate your power using the sun or wind using a windmill. To make these investments in renewables worthwhile, it is ever more important to first invest in energy efficient lighting and appliances, ensure that your building envelope is tight and that your roof is properly ventilated and insulated.
Whichever way you decide to go, ensure that you establish your needs, do your homework and seek professional advice to both select and install a suitable standby power system.

o Send questions or comments to sbrown@graphitebahamas.com. Sonia Brown is principal of Graphite Engineering Ltd. and is a registered professional engineer.

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