If you're living in an apartment building I don't think a generator would be a good idea. Is there some special medical reason, like a ventilator, that would require 24/7 emergency power?

In wide-spread power outages, generators can be trouble magnets, as I have first-hand experience with. One needs to plan ahead carefully to reduce the potential problems and that's way beyond this conversation.

We do have a generator and we have seriously used it for emergency power twice. Of the consumer grade generators, I completely agree that the ones with Honda engines are in the upper range of overall quality, particularly those gensets made by Honda. I've used those "commercially" around the world and like them. But for all the time it probably sits in the garage doing nothing for ahomeowner, that would be an expensive choice. We have a conventional US-made 4kw genset in the garage and it was a good value.

But we don't HAVE to have the genset - it just makes some potential situations a bit more comfortable for us and gives us more options.

My 2 cents.

Tom