My question about this is, are there generator systems that allow you to safely dump the waste heat from combustion inside the way a forced-air furnace system does?
Getting more speculative/forward looking: if we can get the up front costs down enough to consider swapping the generator in your model for a methane fuel cell, would it be cheaper to heat and power your house with natural gas than to run off the grid? (Not that any MA town I’ve lived in would be likely to approve a building permit for such a thing, but still, interesting question).
FWIW there are RVs with electric heat pumps (though less efficient than residential ones, usually) as well as on-board (propane, gas, or diesel) generators. In this context there are definitely cases where it’s cheaper to run the generator and heat pump than to run the propane furnace. These kinds of systems also benefit from the presence of batteries (which, set up properly, can stabilize power draw and from the generator, and minimize generator run time and start/stop cycles, as the heat pump turns on and off). Last summer I dry camped in Wyoming for about a month, and my 10kWh battery + 3kW inverter let me cut my generator fuel use (for AC, not heat, but similar idea) in half (would have been even better but I was limited by max converter charging rate and battery thermal management) compared to if I didn’t have that.
My question about this is, are there generator systems that allow you to safely dump the waste heat from combustion inside the way a forced-air furnace system does?
Getting more speculative/forward looking: if we can get the up front costs down enough to consider swapping the generator in your model for a methane fuel cell, would it be cheaper to heat and power your house with natural gas than to run off the grid? (Not that any MA town I’ve lived in would be likely to approve a building permit for such a thing, but still, interesting question).
FWIW there are RVs with electric heat pumps (though less efficient than residential ones, usually) as well as on-board (propane, gas, or diesel) generators. In this context there are definitely cases where it’s cheaper to run the generator and heat pump than to run the propane furnace. These kinds of systems also benefit from the presence of batteries (which, set up properly, can stabilize power draw and from the generator, and minimize generator run time and start/stop cycles, as the heat pump turns on and off). Last summer I dry camped in Wyoming for about a month, and my 10kWh battery + 3kW inverter let me cut my generator fuel use (for AC, not heat, but similar idea) in half (would have been even better but I was limited by max converter charging rate and battery thermal management) compared to if I didn’t have that.