I went down that rabbit hole this summer. With three freezers full of food we can't afford a prolonged outage. The house was wired for a portable generator, there is a special plug on the outside wall to plug the generator into and had a manual transfer switch. I had it inspected and was told it was old but would probably work for our barest of needs.
Then I looked into generators. I would have to store it in a barn 100 yards from the house and go get it if there was an outage and we were home. If we were traveling it would just sit. I would have to start it up every few weeks to keep it limbered up and keep the fuel fresh. After adding up all the minuses of using a portable and the only minus to getting a dedicated generator ($$$) I went with a 13kw Generac running on natural gas and a 16 breaker automatic transfer switch. All in it cost $6000 but it is totally hands off and the entire system has a warranty. It still freaks me out at 2:00 PM every Wednesday when it fires itself up for 12 minutes of exercise. I get an email with a report on oil pressure, rpm, etc.
I really like the fact that it is totally hands-off and will keep the furnaces and freezers running even if we are traveling.
