In recent years, blackouts in places like Texas and California have made more people aware of how fragile the power grid can be. Though we’ve largely come to expect that the lights will come on when we flip the switch, the truth is that inclement weather, equipment failures, or myriad other problems can suddenly leave us without power.
Depending on the specific situation, this could be a mild annoyance or a serious, life-threatening emergency. It’s bad if your air conditioner, space heater, or water heater doesn’t have a power source, but it’s a major problem if you need a piece of life-saving medical equipment that isn’t working.
In any case, if you’ve been thinking about ways you can protect yourself from power outages, you might want to look into home generators. You can think of a home generator as being an investment akin to insurance, which provides a home backup for your entire home. It’ll probably sit idle most of the time, but it could also keep a bad situation from becoming an outright catastrophe.
That said, there are many different kinds of backup generators, each involving its own tradeoffs. Let’s walk through the options you have available so you can decide if it’s worth getting a home generator.
What Is a Home Generator?
A home generator is a particular kind of appliance that supplies electricity to a building. Home generators come in several major varieties, including standby generators, inverter generators, home standby generators, and portable power stations. We’ll have more to say about each later on.
Though they usually aren’t very big, you may be surprised at how much power a whole-house generator can supply. Some models can produce as much as 20,000 watts, enough to power homes, small office buildings, RVs, and many other dwellings.
Though they’re called generators, they usually operate by taking a fuel source, such as gasoline or natural gas, and converting that into electricity (rather than actually generating it themselves.)
Home generators are generally activated with a transfer switch, which comes in a variety of different amp ratings. There are manual transfer switches, which require you to turn the generator on yourself during an outage, and automatic transfer switches, which start up on their own.
What’s the Benefit of Home Generators?
As with any other major purchase, you need to understand the benefits of home generators and weigh it against other considerations, such as cost. Armed with this information, you’ll be well-positioned to decide what generator offers the best power solution for your home use.
Arguably the biggest benefit of using a home generator is that it offers peace of mind. In the same way that a home insurance policy means you’re protected from catastrophic loss if your house burns down, a home generator means you’re protected in the event of a sustained loss of power.
It can be easy to dismiss a “peace of mind” benefit because major calamities are, thankfully, pretty rare. But as anyone who’s ever lost a home, a car, or a loved one can attest, you’re awfully happy you have insurance (or a home generator) when you actually need it.
What’s the Average Cost to Have a Whole-House Generator Installed?
Probably the single biggest drawback to home generators is that they can be expensive to purchase and install. It’s possible to find home generators for as low as a few hundred dollars. But on average, getting a quality home generator and having it professionally installed by an electrician is likely to run you anywhere from $10,000 to $20,000. For most households this is going to be a fairly major expense, so you’ll need to plan and budget accordingly.
Are Home Generators Dangerous?
As with any major appliance, be sure to take the proper safety precautions when using a home generator as there are potential dangers. Make sure it’s only installed by a licensed electrician and that both the product and service are under warranty.
Most home generators take a combustible fuel – such as gasoline, natural gas, or liquid propane – and use that to make electricity. Naturally, this means there’s exhaust, and if there’s exhaust, there’s a risk of carbon monoxide exposure.
Be sure to only run the generator outside to reduce the danger from carbon monoxide. Still, it’s possible for the vapors to make their way into your home through a crack or open window, so install a carbon monoxide monitor near the generator and in any room near it.
Is It Worth Getting a Whole-House Generator?
Answering this question requires you to grapple with your priorities, your power needs, and your budget. A quality generator, even for a modest home, is likely going to run into the thousands of dollars, so if power outages and rolling blackouts aren’t common in your area, the investment might not make sense.
However, you should think carefully about the future. Power outages might not be a concern today, but they could become a more likely reality as climate change continues to spur extreme weather events. Also, if you have medical equipment that you or other members of your household rely on, then it would absolutely be worth ensuring your power isn’t interrupted.
Even if these scenarios don’t necessarily apply to you, you might just want the peace of mind that comes with knowing your appliances — like your central air unit, fridge, toaster oven, or sump pump — will always stay on. In the end, avoiding the cost of spoiled food or the time and energy it’ll take to get things running again might be worth the investment of a whole-home backup generator.
How Many Home Generators Are There in The United States?
Precise figures for the number of homeowners using generators in the United States are hard to come by, but there are a variety of statistics available on the use of portable generators, home standby generators, and similar equipment that give us a general idea of their ubiquity.
According to NPR, concerns over an aging power grid and more frequent outages has led to huge increase in the number of home generators being added to households. The CEO of Generac Power Systems, a popular manufacturer of home generators, saw their 2021 revenue increase by 50%. Whether this is a consistent trend or a flash in the pan remains to be seen, but it nevertheless suggests that many Americans weighed the pros and cons and decided the investment was worth it.
In 2022, portable clean energy company GoalZero released a survey that found that only 15% of households surveyed had a backup power system in place. However, the same survey also found that over half of respondents wanted some form of backup power and a whopping 84% expressed concern over the possibility of power outages in the future.
While it seems that using generators for home power isn’t yet totally mainstream, it’s looking like it will continue to become more popular in the years ahead — especially if power sources become more unreliable.
What Is the Best Generator for Home Use?
There are many types of generators to choose from, and they differ in technical details such as whether they’re air-cooled or can be operated via Wi-Fi. In this section, we’ll outline the major categories to help you make the best decision for your situation.
Portable Home Generators
For the budget-conscious shopper who is also keen on convenience, portable generators are a great option. They tend to be more affordable than other kinds of home generators (about $500 to $3,000) and their small size means they’re easy to move around. You can find portable generators that run on gasoline, natural gas, liquid propane, and diesel.
Inverter Generators
Like portable generators, inverter generators are small-size generators that are easy to move around, and they usually run on gasoline. One advantage they have over portable generators is that they produce less noise, so they’re suitable for activities like camping where loud machinery is inappropriate. The downside is that they’re often more expensive.
Home Standby Generators
Bigger and more expensive than either portable or inverter generators, standby generators are meant to be a long-term solution to power outages. Most are automatic standby generators, which means they’ll kick in automatically in the event of a power outage. Be sure to think about fuel type when considering a home standby generator, as they generally utilize either propane or natural gas (that you can access through your gas line) rather than gasoline.
Portable Power Stations
Portable power stations are a relatively new contender in the market. They don’t use propane or gas as a fuel source — instead, they operate via high-capacity batteries. This means they don’t produce dangerous gases like carbon monoxide, making them ideal for indoor use. But it also means they might not last through a longer power outage in the way that one of the other options would.
How Big of a Generator Do I Need to Run My House?
Figuring this out mostly boils down to listing all the appliances you have in your house and finding out what power needs you must meet to keep everything running. The owner’s manual for a given device will list lots of different electrical measurements, such as power output, but the one you care about is wattage.
Calculate the aggregate wattage of all the devices in your home, and make sure this number is smaller than the total wattage produced by your generator. The majority of households should be able to meet their basic power needs with a small 5,000-watt generator, as long as they’re not running everything at the same time. If you have a larger home, you’re running many more appliances, or you want to keep everything on all the time, you might need something as large as 35,000 watts.
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One important thing to keep in mind is that when you first switch over to using your home generator after a power outage, there’ll be a surge in the wattage it has to provide. This is called, appropriately enough, surge wattage. When you’re calculating how big of a generator you need, be sure to add at least 2,000 watts to your figures to make sure you can accommodate the initial surge of an appliance powering on.
A common strategy for reducing the chances that you’ll overload your home generator is to cycle the appliances that are running. Rather than having the coffee maker, washing machine, and TV all running at the same time, be more strategic. For example, only run the coffee maker and the washing machine, or the coffee maker and the TV, or the coffee maker by itself. (You’ll have to keep the coffee flowing — a power emergency is no time to cut back on caffeine!)
Finding the Right Generator for You
Home generators can be expensive so it’s important that you clearly understand your goals and requirements. If you just need something to charge your phone on a camping trip, that’s very different from seeking a permanent source of backup power for emergencies.
Regardless of whether you choose to get a home generator or not, it never hurts to prepare for the worst. Power outages can be disruptive at best and extremely dangerous at worst, so check out our guide on how to prepare for a power outage.
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