Champion Generators...

[Dr. Gonzo]

I put in some solar panels, AGM batteries, and a pure sine inverter in a few years ago to run some interior lighting. Figured I'd confuse the neighbors when the power goes out and I'm the only house on the block with the lights on. Of course, now that we have that little insurance policy we haven't lost power once since. A month or two back a tornado tore a$$ through town about 5 blocks away from our house. 1/3 of the houses here were without power for days. The Taco Bell half a mile from my house was devastated. :O Lights never even flickered at my place. Starting to think mother nature is messing with me about spending the money for the rig. heheh

G

 

[Max Speed]

I set up mine to back feed through my plug to my welder in the garage, I push 220 volts in and it splits the power and energizes both sides of the circuit box with 110 volts. I do it after the main is turned off so I don't fry some power worker on the pole down the road some place.

 

[Poppy]

I lived in Florida for 25+ years and had to contend with numerous long-term outages; several outages due to direct tropical storm or hurricane impacts lasting 1 to 2 weeks. Several points my wife and I discussed that lead us to not purchase a generator; storage of the unit, storage of fuel, trying to get fuel after a major hit is almost impossible, we were fortunate to have natural gas for the water heater and stove, we had city water pressure during previous outages...the most important thing that concerned us was having a generator during a time of crisis put your location high on the thieves radar. In a congested urban setting, you will be targeted either during the crisis or after when things get back to "normal". It's unfortunate but if your house is lit up during a regional power outage, you will draw unwanted attention. If we had lived in a semi-rural area, we would have definitely utilized a generator and had the house wired for safe use.