I'm actually not sure if I should put this here or in large scale

Friday Night, we got hit with a partial blackout - we lost a leg of the 220v, and were browned out on the other leg

Moved all the food to the fridge that was on the 'good' leg (we have 1 fridge on each leg - a good thing), broke out the 2000 watt honda, but decided NOT to start it up, and live with what was on the one leg. Of course, this left us with no AC on a 100 deg day

So, now we're seriously looking at whole house units - Looking around, a 17Kw unit should be able to do our whole place with no load sheading/management, but...

Does anyone here have any actual experience with both full house and or managed load units. We will go with NG power.

At my parents house, 3 miles away, they had 3 blackouts in 54 years (each time the whole east coast went down). My house, this was the 5-6 blackout in a bit less than 10 years. Seems the grid is a tad less stable by me (they keep loosing feeder lines under the streets, which take out transformers)

You got lucky!

As you know, I live not far from you. We lost power from 1:30pm - 6:30 pm on Friday, and again from 2:30pm - 6pm on Saturday.

I'm starting research on a whole house setup as well. I'll be interested in seeing what advice is forthcoming on the forum. . .

let us start with obvious- are you made of money?
If you are, then this is a no brainer, go for it.

If not, I would look at
A) is there a critical need, and
B) bang for buck

A) is the a medical or business need for instant backup?
if not, go to B)

B) what is this worth?

This will likely cost upwards of $10,000.00 installed.

How many hours/days of downtime do you have a year? lets say 2 weeks a year. and assume generator lasts 20 years. 40 weeks of power for $10,000.00- ignoring service and gas, that is $250.00 per week of use, kinda steep.

a 6500 watt Honda Industrial generator is 2400.00 , 1/4th the cost, and you could take it with you if you move.

honestly, I looked at this too, but could not justify cost/usefulness.

unless you are really rich, or cannot afford 5 minutes downtime (medical equipment/business needs) I would say no.

will mirror the comments from LamontC above... having natural gas for a fuel is a definite plus...propane and gasoline provide additional problems... I would guess most people down here not on natural gas have a 6500-8500Watt gasoline powered portable... either back feed into the breaker box or more likely dedicated HD extensions running to the refrigerator and small window mount air conditioner in the bedroom...

as a courtesy to your neighbors, get one with a good muffler... you sure can get aggravated trying to sleep with no power, 90+F weather, and a noisy generator next door

We put in an "automatic standby generator" recently, natural gas powered. It is not a "whole house generator." It is 8kw.

It covers critical circuits in the house--medical equipment, fridge (insulin storage, food) freezer, and sump pump, with just enough left over for some lights (not all rooms) and tv. Our stove is gas. Installed, with transfer panel, it ran around 8500. No 220, so no AC.

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."

There is something you may not be aware of that limits what you can do. This is the size of the gas line and meter serving your house. In my case, all I had to do was swap out the meter for a larger one, and have the gas company dig up my lawn to locate and remove a limiter valve in the gas line serving the house. They did this at no cost. The capacity of the gas line itself was sufficient (with the removal of the limiter valve) to serve the existing gas appliances and the new generator. The gas company had to review and approve the new generator's gas usage before it was installed to be sure there was capacity for it. The larger the generator, the more chance you will run out of capacity in your gas line service.

IF they had determined the gas line service was not adequate, it may be possible to run a new gas line from the main to your house. This is very expensive--around here, another 10K minimum in addition to the cost of the generator installation itself. The cost (in our case) could have gone over 20K total if a new gas line was required. We put a clause in the generator contractor's contract that if the gas company said we needed a new gas line, then the contract for the generator installation was cancelled at no cost to us.

Bottom line is that I am very satisfied with the generator, and we have needed it on 2 or 3 occasions since it was installed.

But I think "whole house" is probably unrealistic. Try taking a close look at what you really need. For example, do the bedrooms really need power? Do the washer and dryer? The garage door opener? All the light and sockets?

One way to check is to throw off the breakers in your box one at a time, and find out which circuits you really really need. Add up those circuits and it will put you in the ball park for the size generator you need. Note that switching what is on what circuit in the house can add to the expense. The generator transfer box installer will want to identify whole circuits in your existing box to put onto the automatic transfer box.

Hope this helps.

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.

Good Advice from IzzyJG.

My generator is a Generac also.

And I did forget to mention that what you have wired into the transfer panel has to pass county electrical inspection for the size generator you are installing. Actually, you need both gas and electrical inspections.

I think it is a "devil is in the details" problem-- what is on which circuit, how many circuits = what KW need = what size generator, and then what can be done at what cost.

Hard to get your head around, but the key is "survival" and not "everything is just like normal."

Top priority in our case was DW's needs. All else secondary. The installers told me about 80% of the systems they install are for medical reasons.

As I said, I'm borderline disabled - depends on the day. Here in NYC, there is more than one Generac dealer (and found out a friend is one of them! I thought he was only in the fire alarm business, but nope).

I won't need/use a tank, I'll live with piped in NG

Well see what the total estimate comes out to. Looking at the bigger transfer switches Generac sells, it'll cover the whole house, so...

Irony:

We just had a normal summer thunderstorm roll through and it knocked power off just long enough for the generator to kick on. The power then came back on and the generator turned off.

Thunderstorms are common here in the summer. We never lost power except in major Hurricanes when I was a kid. Now its a normal and frequent experience whenever it rains or the wind blows...

Now going sideways from main discussion slightly;

whatever generator you go with, you might want to look at a UPS for critical needs- if you get one that has automatic voltage regulation it will deal with power spikes, brownouts, dirty power (like say, from a cheaper generator) etc.

that way when your power goes out, your important stuff doesn't.

Also, if you decide not to go with automatic backup, you get some time to get everything fired up.

One way or another, let us know how it works out