Worried about being away from home and losing power for days on end? An automatic standby generator will take those worries away and HB Electric Solutions can help you out with that. An automatic standby generator will start upon the loss of power and when combined with an automatic transfer switch will transfer power over to the generator automatically until utility power is restored. This will give you peace of mind knowing that your home will never miss a beat during an outage. There are a few things to consider when preparing to purchase one of these set ups though and its our goal to help you out with these decisions in this blog post.
First of all, what size do you need? Automatic standby generators come in sizes from 8Kw up to 22Kw in the most common air cooled versions. For most homes with gas or propane heat and hot water an 11Kw up to 16Kw will fit the bill. These will run most everything in your home with the exception of your larger loads such as an electric dryer or range. This will give you lights, heat, keep your refrigerator and freezer going, and possibly your heat pump or A/C unit depending on its size. There are several easy to use sizing guides available online to help you out with finding the suitable size as well. Standby generators are typically fueled by natural gas or propane depending on what is available to your home. Something to consider when choosing a generator if you are planning on fueling it with natural gas is if the line coming to your home is adequate enough for your generator. Your local gas provider can help answer that question for you.
There are a couple options when it comes to the automatic transfer switch to consider as well. You can have a full size, 200 amp transfer switch which will provide power to your whole electrical panel. These are probably most commonly found in homes. Keep in mind you are limited to the size of your generator so you may not be able to use every electrical device in your home, just because it has power doesn’t mean you are able to use it. Another option is to have an automatic transfer switch that has a built in panel for the loads you want to use while on generator power. With this you would have the circuits available that would be essential during a power outage. Things such as your furnace, lights, and freezer would be examples of loads that would be carried by this panel. Finally there are switches capable of turning on and off circuits as the demands increase or decrease. These are called load shedding panels. With these devices, your essential loads would remain on at all times, and you have a load shedding section with circuits that would be nice to have on during an outage, but not critical that they stay on all the time.
Hopefully this sheds some light on automatic standby generators and automatic transfer switches. If you have any questions or would like to discuss installation in your home or business feel free to give HB Electric Solutions a call at 253-256-7861, or send us an email at info@hbelectricsolutions.com and we would be glad to help you out.