The Keyport Fire House in Keyport, NJ has been a Green Sun Energy Services client since April of 2020. The generator was installed by another company and commissioned in December of 2015, and the servicing came to us four years later. Four intervals have been kept since – the five-year service in 2020, then the two-year, three-year and four-year visits through to 2023. A fire house is the one building on a street where backup power is not a convenience: the alerting equipment, the bay doors and the communications all depend on it, and an outage is exactly the sort of night the building is most likely to be needed. Keyport sits on Raritan Bay, where salt in the air works on anything left outdoors and makes the yearly look inside the enclosure worth more than it would be inland.
Project Facts
- Location
- Keyport, NJ
- Service
- Standby Generator Service
- Client since
- April 2020
- Manufacturer
- Generac Model # 6551
- Rated output
- 22 kW LP / 19.5 kW NG
- Fuel
- Natural Gas
- Transfer switch
- 100 amp
- Load management
- Managed Whole House
Standby generator questions from Keyport homeowners
Will a 22 kW generator run an entire Keyport house?
For many homes, yes, but that does not mean every load can run at the same moment. Houses with two central air conditioners, electric heat, EV charging, pool equipment or electric cooking may need load management or a larger machine. The answer comes from a load calculation rather than from the phrase whole house.
Can the generator be connected to any nearby gas pipe?
No. The branch supplying the generator has to be sized for the flow and pressure the machine needs. A pipe that happens to be close by may be too small, or may already be carrying too much load. Undersized piping shows up as poor starting, unstable running, reduced output or a generator that shuts down under load.
What is a standby generator?
A permanently installed automatic backup-power system that supplies electricity to the house when utility power is unavailable. Unlike a portable, it is permanently connected to the home's electrical system through transfer equipment and normally runs on natural gas or liquid propane. When the power fails it starts on its own, carries the connected loads, and hands the house back to the utility once service returns.