A few years ago, after buying this house, we had to have an electrician come in to fix a few things. He noticed we had a generator and commented to my husband, that he could hook us up with a whole house generator for under $2,000. That is a lot of money and I thought my husband was nuts when he wanted to do it.
Two weeks after having it set up, we had a hard winter storm and lost power for 5 days. The generator, which we'd used to run just the freezer in the past, could then run the water pump , the furnace and we had lights and TV at night, plus the frig and freezer for the entire time of the power outage. I would encourage any one who lives where they have frequent power outages, to consider one. It is a lot simpler than I thought and was the best $2,000 we ever spent.