Emergency Preparedness

Are you prepared for the next outage? In this new electrically driven world electricity has become a basis for our survival whether it’s keeping the heat or cold on or ensuring the food in your refrigerator doesn’t spoil; everyone should have a gameplan for the next upcoming emergency because threats to our power infrastructure are only increasing as time goes on. Don’t wait until the next threat of an outage to make your gameplan, and make sure you and your family are prepared today.

The first step to an emergency preparedness plan is understanding what items you need to keep powered in your home to get through the next outage. The individual items needed can be calculated by determining the start up requirements and running requirements of the items needed. Please note a certified electrician is advised for assistance for the most accurate calculation. Once you have determined how much power you needed, then you can start looking for a generator based on your needs. Please note that it is a best practice to ensure the required power is under the rated or running wattage that the generator can produce, since this is the power output the generator can produce consistently.

After determining the generator size needed, then you’ll want to speak with a local certified electrician to determine the best way to hook the generator to your home. There are multiple options available to accomplish this such as an interlock kit, transfer switches, or directly through use of extension cords depending on your preference. We’d recommend speaking with the electrician for the advantages and disadvantages of all of these to better determine which solution would work best for your home.

The final step will be to determine how long you need to keep the required power output maintained based on the length of the normal power outages in your area. Once the length of time determined, then you’ll want to determine the purchased generators consumption rate for the fuel desired to ensure you have enough fuel to last the full length of the outage comfortably.

Once the generator has been purchased, connected, and you have your fuel reserves, then your officially prepared for your next outage and can experience the piece of mind knowing and security of knowing your prepared.