A diesel generator - what a good thing to have! When we moved here 15 years ago, electricity supply could be somewhat unreliable: several very short interruptions each day (maybe for up to a minute each), plus some longer ones. Voltage (supposed to be the EU standard of 230) could wander down towards 200 quite regularly, and even dipped to 170 on a good few occasions - at which point 'fridge motors don't rotate, they just vibrate
. Worst outage was 5h one Christmas day, with several of the family from UK here. Since those days, and the national generator Endesa being taken to court and heavily fined for the quality of their service in Andalucia, things have improved no end; maybe we see a two or three cuts a year, usually for scheduled maintenance.
So, from the word go we bought a backup generator. Ended up with a 2500VA Honda petrol at around €300. Anything diesel was five times that, although usually twice the output. While doing a bit of building work, we created a brick-built fire-proof cubby-room for it, accessible from the garage under the house, and with a 42mm exhaust run to outside, air in and fully extractor-vented. A 3-way changeover switch was installed next to our consumer unit, so that the main phase for the house could be flipped from normal to generator, as is legally required.
Petrol isn't the best thing to leave sitting for months at a time, years 'in the can', but it seems to last ok these days. The Honda always starts 3rd pull at worst, which is why we opted for it. It did the 5h Christmas duty, and has done a few of "all day" outages as well.
Early on, after a power cut, we got a phone call from a neighbour on the other other side of the valley, letting us know that grid power had been back on for half-an-hour . . .
. We soon added a switchable beeper to the consumer unit to alert us to the main supply returning!
Did once idly wonder about an XUD coupled up to an alternator . . .
. . . probably a bit OTT.
