yeah, i know it's overkill, but inductive loading tends to be a common "emergency" load - motors and all...

As I said, I have a 3,500 watt Honda EB unit - a Kick-Butt performer that runs a TRUE and CONSTANT 3,500 watts and handles surge loads well.

Amazingly, our firehouse does NOT have a backup generator, and during the September 2004 floods, we lost power for three days - and my little Honda powered two commercial refrigerators, two dozen radio chargers and some lighting. Even with 2 running at once, it worked just fine.

You can get a 7,000 watt genny for under $2,000 today - and that's for a really tough one. You can get a cheapie for about $1,000 and still get 7KW, although it's not as "Clean" as the Honda gen sets. I have pretty darn stable frequency and voltage from mine - +/- 3% or less, even as loads come online.