The Best Power Generators For Your Home: In this guide, we’ve made the task of choosing the best power generators for your home and needs super easy. Whenever there’s a power outage, a home generator helps keep appliances running thus, making life more comfortable while you wait for power to be restored.
However, before selecting the right power generator, you need to understand its suitability in relation to how it will be utilized.
In this concise guide, you will understand the pertinent factors to consider, output capabilities, power demand, size, noise, and overall performance when choosing a generator.
It matters little if you’re only interested in an emergency backup or a more sizable standby generator. This article comes with a range of solutions that will help guide your best decision.
How Much Generator Power Does Your Home Need?
Let’s face it. The major reason why you would want to buy a generator is because of its power supply. That’s why the first step in selecting what type of generator to buy depends on how much power you need.
Basically, power generators can come in the form of small, portable machines suitable for camping or leisure activities with just the right amount of power to run a few appliances.
Others are more powerful installations with enough juice to run an entire house. And then there are the even more powerful industrial generators capable of running office complexes, hospitals, and manufacturing facilities.
Generally, power generators can be categorized into portable generators, propane generators, natural gas generators, petrol generators, etc.
Before deciding on the right generator size for your home, you’ll have to:
- Make a list of the appliances you want to power.
- Note the starting and running wattage of the appliances you listed.
- Sum up the total wattage and use the total number as a guide that will determine the size of generator you will need.
Types of Home Generators
A generator can produce the right amount of power to run important appliances in your home. Generators can be classed under three major groups. These are the whole house generators, portable generators, and inverter generators.
Whole House Generators
Whole house generators are excellent at offering a compact and reliable backup solution for homes. They also automatically turn on whenever the electricity supply goes off.
They mostly run on liquid propane gas (LPG) and with an output range between 5,000 to 20,000 watts, they’re very capable of powering a household.
The great thing about this type of generator is that they require less maintenance since propane is a clean-burning fuel.
However, they tend to be on the high side in terms of their cost and as such are unpopular among several households.
Portable Generators
Portable generators are efficient and they provide a decent source of power whenever they’re needed. You can plug appliances or power tools directly into the unit’s outlets at the generator’s front panel or to power circuits in the house using a manual transfer switch.
Typically, portable generators run on petrol fuel and this makes them the more preferred option for many people.
Their output ranges from 3,000 to 8,500 watts and several models come with electric starts. In addition, there are quite affordable and powerful enough to power the most elementary appliances in the home.
Due to their portability, they can also be easily moved from place to place. A task that would be nearly impossible for whole house generators.
You can check here to see a selection of high-quality portable generators for your home.
Inverter Generators
Inverter generators are great power supply options in situations where there is a power outage. They have long run times and are able to power basic appliances in a home.
One good thing about this type of generator is that it produces clean power and at a steady voltage too. This means that an inverter generator’s frequency has low harmonic distortion or THD.
Thus, the machine can power sensitive electronics such as TVs, laptops, tablets, and other smart devices. Unfortunately, inverter generators aren’t sufficiently available for most people in many regions of the world.
Due to this scarcity, their prices can be on the high side. Thus, most people would opt for portable generators.
Extra considerations
Being prepared and owning the best generator size is key to keeping your appliances running while there is a power crisis.
Generally, home generators are classified based on their wattage or output size. The number of home appliances you aim to run together at the same time will depend on how much output, quality, and consistency of power controls how well the appliances operate.
Typically, a 5000-watt model should sufficiently power an entire house. However, to be sure of the generator’s exact size, do a calculation of the total wattage of every appliance you want to run during a power outage. This will guide you on the required generator load you will need.
As soon as you have discovered it, you will have three alternatives to choose from; the whole house generator which is installed on a permanent basis and is powered by natural gas, or the inverter and portable generators that are ideal for home use and perfect as a backup power source.
Another thing worth mentioning is the installation of a transfer switch. The switch is used to safely connect a home portable or standby generator to the home’s circuit panel using one cable.
For standby models, the switch automatically turns on when the power goes out. However, the same switch has to be manually turned on in a similar outage for portable generators.
Conclusion
Generators, generally help provide backup power to keep home appliances effectively running whenever you get cut off from the power grid.
These machines supply emergency power and are flexible enough to power entire homes. When it is time to choose the best power generator for home use, consider models that are fuel-efficient, safe, and run more quietly such as the ones here.