Well, things like garage door is 'incidental' - can turn something off

Stove/dryer etc are NG already, so

Turns out, I emailed a friend who has one, and it turns out he became a dealer when he put his in. He figures roughly I'd need a 12Kw-14Kw

I too am in the "The past few years we had been using a portable generator for our frequent power outages, but as medical needs for my DW grew, and my age went up, it seemed to move from "nice to have" to "gotta have."" mode - but it's for me. Bum leg, gotta keep the insulin cold, gotta keep the CPAP machine running etc.

We can probably go with a managed load setup - we'll see, as we don't have a huge place, and sheadding some of the room ACs is very very possible (for instance, we rarely run the dining room unit, Hugh (my son) NEVER runs his - he hates having it on in his room, the bleed in from other rooms is enough for him, and my daughter is willing to crash on the couch. Thing is, those units are tied on weird circuits, as are the outlets downstairs - there is this one breaker (#16) that seems to power about 1/2 the first floor of the house.

Basically it's starting to come down to - my wife can't do the job (or doesn't want to) - I CAN, at this point, deal with doing it manually, but I also can tell that in 5-10 years I won't be able to. What I want to do is get quotes at this time, and if it's 'reasonable' do it, if not, dont. I know a 17Kw unit is circa $3750+ install, if we go smaller, it's cheaper.