Whole-home generators

Full house or essential circuits

With full coverage, the transfer switch moves your whole panel to generator power. You live normally during an outage, within the limits of the generator's output. With essential-circuit coverage, a smaller generator feeds a short list of circuits through a separate subpanel, typically heat, sump pump, fridge, well pump if you have one, some lights and a few outlets.

Full coverage costs more because it needs a larger generator and a service-rated transfer switch. Essential coverage costs less but means some rooms go dark. A lot of families split the difference with load management, described below.

Load management in plain terms

Load management modules let a mid-size generator run a whole house by holding back large appliances, such as central air or an electric dryer, until there is spare capacity. You rarely need everything running at the same moment, so the generator can stay smaller than your total load. Ask the installer how the modules are set up and which appliances wait their turn.

Load management is also a good fit for houses that may add an EV charger or heat pump later, since it can be set up to manage those loads too.

Choosing a fuel

Natural gas is the easiest fuel when it is available. It flows from the street, and nobody has to remember a delivery. The gas utility may need to confirm that your meter can supply the generator plus your furnace, water heater and stove at once.

Propane works anywhere. It is stored in a tank on your property, above ground or buried, sized for how many days of runtime you want. You will need deliveries, and the tank has its own placement rules. Many homes on the wooded lots outside the river villages use propane for this reason.

Only a licensed professional should connect gas or propane lines. If you ever smell gas, get out of the house first and call 911 or your utility from outside.

Winter matters most

Summer outages are uncomfortable. Winter outages can be costly. Without power, most furnaces and boilers stop, pipes can freeze, and a sump pump cannot handle snowmelt. When you list what to back up, start with heat, water and the sump, then add comfort items. If you have an older house with a well pump, include it, since no power usually means no water.

Questions to ask before you choose

How many kilowatts do you recommend, and what will run at once? Will you install load management? Does my gas meter need an upgrade? How long can a propane tank of this size run the generator? What happens during the weekly self-test? Clear written answers make quotes much easier to compare.

Also ask how the installer handles the gas utility. A larger generator can need a meter upgrade, and scheduling that work with the utility is often the slowest part of the project. Knowing early keeps your timeline realistic.

Questions homeowners ask