[RickFLM4]

As others have stated, if you have natural gas (or a large propane tank) readily available, a standby is the way to go. If you don’t, then you’ll probably want to go portable. We have plenty of outages due to storms and looked at burying a 1,000 gallon propane tank, getting a larger (20kw+) standby generator, and running propane to gas grill, a pool heater and water heaters and the price was prohibitive to me (around $20K more than 10 years ago) plus the operating cost of fuel was pretty high.

I settled on a 17.5kw portable Generac monster of a portable. It is set up so I can connect it to a panel and run a refrigerator, stove, one of our central ac units, one of our hot water heaters, most lights and most ceiling fans in the house (while chained and locked to a tree). Downside is it requires gasoline, but gas stations here are required by law to have generators of their own to pump gas when power is out. I have used it a grand total of once in 10+ years. So yes the gas is a downside and less convenient, but the cost was about 10-15% of digging up my yard for a tank and getting a standby, with minimal maintenance costs, so a happy medium.

I recommend figuring out what you really need it for before jumping in and then plan it accordingly. If you get a portable to do more than basics for a few hours, I also recommend getting it set up to plug into the panel rather than trying to run extension cords. Make sure you plan to maintain it and run it periodically no matter what you do (including keeping air in the tires for a portable). And find a safe place to run it away from doors and windows, and buy at least a couple of CO2 detectors. Don’t store gasoline for long if you can avoid it and throw some Stabil in if you plan to keep it for more than a few weeks.