What size standby generator does a Marion County home need?

Most Marion County homes are better served by a generator sized to a managed set of essential circuits than by one sized to run the entire house. The whole-house unit costs considerably more, and load management hardware lets a smaller unit cover what actually matters during an outage.

If you are on well water, size for the well pump first. Its starting current is usually the single largest demand on the system, and it is the load people most often forget. When the power goes out on a well, you have no water at all, which is a more urgent problem than no air conditioning.

After the well pump, the essential set is usually one AC system or at minimum the air handler, the refrigerator, some lighting, and outlets for medical equipment or communications. That combination is well within reach of a mid-sized unit with load management.

The electrical scope is the automatic transfer switch, the generator feeder, and the disconnect. The transfer switch is what makes the system automatic and what keeps your generator from backfeeding the utility line, which is the safety issue that makes portable generator backfeeding so dangerous.