Baumalight's TX25 Generator Skips the Engine and Uses Your Tractor
Verdict $5,997 against a 17 kW rental at $165 a day: break-even at 37 rental days. The TX25 has no engine, and asks 42 tractor horsepower at full load.
Prices are US list prices at the time of publication. Shipping, duties and local taxes vary by country — check with the manufacturer before ordering.
Chas. E. Phipps rents a 17 kW portable generator for $165 a day, $495 a week, $1,485 a month. The rates are published, per unit, by the company that collects them.
Baumalight’s TX25 makes 25 kW and sells for $5,997 with a live Add to cart button and InStock in the page’s own JSON-LD. That is 37 days of that rental, or four monthly rentals with $57 left over.
The difference between them is the thing the TX25 does not have: an engine.
The Machine
The TX25 is a two-pole alternator on a two-wheel trailer, spun by the tractor’s PTO shaft at 3,600 internal rpm. Baumalight publishes 25 kW continuous, 50 kW momentary surge, 120/240 volts single phase, 100 amps at the main breaker, 563 pounds, and two years or 2,000 hours of warranty. The price includes the PTO shaft, the trailer and a 10-foot cord with a 175-amp Anderson connector.
The whole ladder sits on one page with prices attached: TX7 at 7 kW for $3,297, TX12 at 12 kW for $3,897, TX18 at 18 kW for $5,397, TX25, TX31 at 31 kW for $6,797.
What the box does not contain is the part that turns it. At 100% load the TX25 asks for 42 horsepower at the PTO; at 50% load, 19. Baumalight rates the series for tractors from 10 to 50 horsepower — a range for the family, not for this model. A 25-horsepower compact will spin a TX25. It will not hold 25 kW on it.
The Numbers
| Item | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Baumalight TX25, single phase, 10-ft cord | $5,997.00 | Skid Steer Store |
| Continuous / momentary surge | 25 kW / 50 kW | Baumalight spec table |
| Tractor HP at 100% / 50% load | 42 / 19 | Baumalight spec table |
| Full output amps, main breaker | 100 A | Baumalight spec table |
| 17 kW generator rental | $165 day · $495 week · $1,485 month | Chas. E. Phipps |
| 5,000 W generator rental | $85 day · $255 week · $765 month | Chas. E. Phipps |
| U.S. average interruption, 2024 | 11 hours (about 2 without major events) | EIA |
| Diesel, U.S. retail, week of Aug 31 | $5.599 per gallon | EIA |
| Diesel use per PTO horsepower | 0.044 gal/hr | Penn State Extension |
The rented unit is a portable: 992 cc engine, 250 pounds, 17,500 running watts, 26,250 starting. The TX25 carries no engine at all, and still weighs 563 pounds.
Straight across, $5,997 is 37 rental days, 13 rental weeks, or 4.04 rental months; against the 5,000-watt unit at $85, 71 days. Corrected for capacity — $239.88 per kW owned against $9.43 per kW-day rented — the count falls to 25 days, because you are buying more machine than the rental house stocks.
None of those are outage numbers. EIA put the average U.S. customer at 11 hours without power across all of 2024 — nine from major events, about two without them. Eleven hours does not fill one billable rental day. Thirty-seven of them is not a storm season. It is a job.
And the tractor eats while it turns. Penn State Extension estimates diesel use at 0.044 gallons an hour for each PTO horsepower. At 42 horsepower that is 1.85 gallons an hour — $10.35 at EIA’s $5.599 retail diesel, or $248.33 for a day held at full load; at 50% load, $4.68 an hour. The rented unit burns fuel too and the renter pays for it, so this is not a gap between the options. It is a number on neither price page.
What Breaks
The tractor stops being a tractor. During the ice storm that took the line down, it is parked beside the panel at PTO speed, not moving a bale or plowing the lane. The rental generator arrives with its own engine, and that is most of what $165 a day buys.
The hours land on the wrong meter. Thirty-seven rental days of continuous running is 888 hours, and they accumulate on the tractor, not the generator. The 2,000-hour warranty covers the generator, not the tractor. What those hours cost the machine turning it is DATA NOT AVAILABLE FROM SOURCE.
The switch you can actually buy caps the machine. A 50-amp, 10-circuit manual transfer switch passes 12,000 watts at 240 volts. The TX25’s own main breaker is 100 amps — 24,000 watts. Taking the whole 25 kW means a larger switch or an electrician at the service entrance, and neither is in the price. With a $579 Reliance R510A the honest entry cost is $6,576, and 12,000 of the 24,000 watts still have nowhere to go.
Ten feet is the cord. The same unit with 100 feet of single-phase cord is $7,997 on the same page — $2,000 to stand the tractor away from the house.
The diesel figure has road tax in it. EIA’s $5.599 is on-highway retail; off-road dyed diesel is cheaper, and by how much on your farm is DATA NOT AVAILABLE FROM SOURCE. All of the arithmetic here is cash, with no interest counted.
Who Should Buy This
The owner already at the end of a long line. This is the same buyer whose well sits past the co-op’s free footage, on the last span of wire nobody is coming to fix before dinner, where rented days arrive in ones and twos and add up.
Anyone who rents generator days for work, not for weather. A barn build, a well drill, a shop with no service drop yet. Thirty-seven days is one long project, and if they are already on a calendar the count is short rather than theoretical.
The tractor rated well past 42 horsepower and idle in winter. The economics exist because the engine is already sitting in the shed. Below that rating the ladder is priced for a smaller model: the TX7 works out to $471 per kW against $239.88 for this one.
Not for: the house that loses power twice a year for four hours. Not for a 25-horsepower compact, which cannot hold the rating. Not for anyone who has not priced the transfer switch. And not for anyone who needs the tractor during the outage — a battery unit that runs unattended does a smaller job without taking the machine hostage.
The Stack
No affiliate links in this issue. When a link earns us a commission, we always say so. Verdicts are never for sale.
Tractor over 42 horsepower, outages measured in days: the Baumalight TX25 at $5,997 — 25 kW continuous, 50 kW surge, trailer and PTO shaft in the price. Under that rating, the TX12 at $3,897 puts 12 kW behind a 21-horsepower PTO and leaves $2,100 in the account.
Budget the switch in the same breath: the Reliance R510A at $579 is 50 amps and ten circuits, and it is the part that keeps a generator from backfeeding a lineman.
The count on your calendar decides this, not the price on ours. If it is two days a year, $165 a day is the right answer and the engine stays somebody else’s problem.
One machine. All the numbers.
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