It's one of those things you don't think about until the lights go out and stay out. The fridge warms up, the AC dies, your phone is at 8%, and you're suddenly very aware of how much modern life depends on a steady flow of electrons. If you've been through a major storm and gone days — or weeks — without power, you already know. So what are your options? Broadly, two: a portable generator or a whole-home standby system. They're very different animals.
Option one: the portable generator
You can drive to the home-improvement store today and walk out with a portable generator that'll keep some of your house alive. That's the appeal — cheap and immediate. But go in with clear eyes about what it can and can't do.
The big one: a portable almost certainly cannot run your central air conditioner. Your AC needs a different voltage than most portables produce, and the typical portable simply isn't big enough to start and run that compressor. The smaller units will keep your refrigerator going and maybe a lamp or two. So before you buy, look hard at the voltage output and the wattage, and decide honestly how much of the house you actually need to keep running.
They're loud — figure a notch louder than a lawnmower running nonstop. They run on gasoline, so you need a real fuel supply on hand plus oil to keep the engine healthy. And gasoline goes stale, so a can in the shed from two summers ago isn't the plan you think it is.
The one rule you never, ever break
I'm going to say this plainly because it genuinely kills people every storm season: never run a gas-powered generator indoors or in any enclosed space. Not the garage with the door cracked. Not the screened porch. Not "just for a few minutes." These engines pump out carbon monoxide — colorless, odorless, and deadly — and every single hurricane season there's a heartbreaking story about a family that didn't make it because they ran one inside. Keep it well away from the house, away from windows and vents, full stop. No amount of convenience is worth that.
A portable will save your groceries. It will not save your central AC — and it will absolutely kill you if you run it indoors. Respect both facts.
Option two: the whole-home standby
If you want your home to just... keep running when the grid quits, a whole-home standby generator is the answer. Depending on what you need, these can be sized to run the entire house or a chosen set of circuits — the fridge, a few rooms, the well pump, and yes, the central air. They sit outside permanently and kick on automatically.
The big advantages over a portable: most standby units run on propane, so they're quieter and can run a long stretch without refueling. Typically there's a propane tank either buried or securely anchored to the ground — in storm country that anchoring matters — commonly somewhere in the 200-to-500-gallon range depending on your local codes. A buried 500-gallon tank can carry you for days when the normal sources are down. Best of all, with an automatic transfer switch the handoff from the utility to your own power is seamless — you barely notice the grid dropped at all.
How to choose
It comes down to a simple question: what do you need to keep alive, and for how long? If it's "keep the food cold for a short outage," a properly sized portable and a safe place to run it may be plenty. If it's "never lose the AC during a multi-day storm," you're looking at a whole-home standby with the right tank. Get a pro to size it — an undersized standby that can't start your compressor is just an expensive portable. The same right-sizing discipline I preach in bigger is not better applies here too: bigger isn't automatically better, correct is better.
Let's be honest, the grid in this country isn't getting any younger, and between storms and lightning, outages aren't going away. A little planning now beats sweating in the dark later.
Until we meet again, stay safe out there — I'll be heading back down from Electric Avenue to talk air conditioning next time, so do tune in.
Home Whisperer out!!
About the author: Gregory Frazier is an HVAC estimator who has worked Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia and Florida for 25+ years. He wrote a homeowner column for a decade and revived it here as The Home Whisperer. Read his story →