Show off your WHOLE HOUSE GENERATOR.

[slow]

That's a good idea for the neighbor to be powered off outside receptacles. I may use that idea and wire that circuit it into my transfer switch as I have a couple of extra circuits. In 2017 after Hurricane Irma, I ran my fridge off an inverter and charged a small battery bank off my duramax pickup truck. Late in the day my neighbor finally fired up his generator and said I could plug the fridge in. I got a 100' 12 gauge cord and plugged it in. Wife came out and asked how the lights were on in the house. Power came on within the 1 minute it took to get power from the neighbor after being off for 24 hours.

 

[Will S.]

For years, my 6700 watt Mitsibushi gas gen and a 30A outside connector, feeding a 10 circuit manual transfer switch (with watt meters), has been my backup. It's been a good setup for the outages we've had, but at my age, dragging it outside thru the stone, doing the connections, start-up, and transfer is getting to be more of a PITA, especially re-fueling the gas during storms and long outages.

No one knows know how long the power will be out, so how long to wait before going thru all the motions to get power on. Will it come back just as I start the gen? Do without power, water, flushing toilets, heat, light, etc. for how much longer? Last summer I injured my back; couldn't lift, could barely walk, and a couple days later, you guessed it... wide area power outage. I could not move the gen if you paid me, so we just did without.

That's when I decided to get a whole house, auto-start/auto-transfer. Bought a 3 cylinder Perkins diesel, installed in November. We had a power outage a week later. Suddenly the cost of that generator install was worth every penny. We've had 4 outages since Christmas, and each time we are 100% on-line with everything, in about a minute. I should have done this years ago.