Power Outage Prep, Starting From Your Problem

There is a version of outage preparation that involves spending two thousand dollars and a weekend installing hardware. There is also a version that involves buying a thirty-dollar carbon monoxide alarm and a battery, and it solves most of the problem for most households. This hub exists to help you tell which one you need.

What actually goes wrong in an outage, in order

Ranked by how often it turns into real money or real danger:

1. 1The refrigerator and freezer warm up. A full freezer holds for roughly 48 hours unopened; a fridge for about four. After that it is a few hundred dollars of food and a judgment call about what is safe to eat.
2. 2The heat stops. Gas furnaces still need electricity for the blower, the igniter and the controls — the fuel is there and the heat is not. In freezing weather, pipes become a plumbing bill.
3. 3The sump pump stops. If you have a sump pump, you have it for a reason, and a flooded basement in a storm is the most expensive outcome on this list.
4. 4The well pump stops. No power means no water at all — not for drinking, not for flushing.
5. 5Medical equipment stops. A CPAP, an oxygen concentrator, a refrigerated medication. This one is not about money.

Notice how few of those need a big generator. The first and the fifth are battery problems. The second needs about 700 watts. Only the sump pump and the well pump bring real surge demands, and both are addressed in detail in the sizing hub.

The three-tier plan, cheapest first

Tier 1 is not a joke entry. A battery CO alarm, a few frozen gallon jugs in the freezer, a decision in advance about what you will and will not open, and the phone numbers you need — that is a genuinely useful plan and it costs less than a tank of gas.

Tier 2 is where most people should land. A 2 kWh battery power station carries a refrigerator through a typical outage, runs indoors with no exhaust, makes no noise, and needs no fuel stored in the garage. If the outage is six hours, this is simply the better machine.

Tier 3 is a generator properly connected through a transfer switch or interlock kit, and it is the only tier that runs indefinitely and handles motor loads. It is also the tier with real safety obligations attached, which is why the carbon monoxide guide below is linked from every generator page on this site.

Runtime is the thing people plan worst

A generator with an eight-hour tank needs refueling at 3am, in the weather, in the dark, next to a hot engine. That is the single most dangerous routine moment in generator ownership, and it is why runtime and fuel choice matter more than most spec comparisons. Propane changes the calculation — it stores indefinitely and a tank swap is cleaner than a jerry can — and natural gas changes it completely, because a plumbed line does not run out.

Work through the problem guides below in whatever order matches your situation. Each one ends at the smallest thing that genuinely solves it, which is sometimes a generator and often is not.