How Many Times a Month Does Your Home Lose Power?

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How Many Times a Month Does Your Home Lose Power?

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You are winding down this Tuesday evening with an old time radio show and a house full of candles.

Living in Anchorage, Alaska, you realize that many of your friends and family think that power outages are fairly common with all of the snow that you get. The fact of the matter is, however, you remember the power actually going out more in in the midwestern part of the country than it does up north. In Alaska, your power outages seem more connected to high winds than snow. In fact, the snow this far north is usually light and fluffy and does not accumulate on power lines like a wet, heavy midwestern snow storm.
No matter where you live and no matter what the cause for interruption, if you are in a part of the country where power outages are common you have likely considered the options of whole home generator pricing. Whole house generators, in fact, are some of the best options for property owners in many parts of the country where power can be interrupted frequently. In addition, if you live in a state where extremely cold or extremely hot temperatures are common, considering whole home generator pricing is important even if you do not need to use it very frequently. The risk to your personal health as well as the integrity of the pipes in your home are important enough to make many property owners realize that whole home generator pricing is worth the investment.

Emergency Generator Installation Is Often Difficult to Schedule in the Middle of the Worst Weather

Like many things in life, planning ahead pays off when it comes to whole home generator pricing. Paying for the services of generator installers is often, in fact, more affordable when you are not in the most desperate need. When the temperatures plummet, and the contractors and generators are in short supply, you often find yourself at the mercy of contractors who you other wise might not select.
Consider some of these facts and figures about the many times when investing in a whole house generator might be in your best interest:

  • When selecting a generator, it is essential to take into consideration that at startup, many electrical devices need more current. The peak power rating on a generator, as a result, should be higher than the actual calculated need. Most experts, in fact, suggest a unit producing 4,000 peak watts or more for a household application.
  • The average American home spends about 2.7% of its income on energy bills. That is about $2,000 a year, and this is a number that many of us take for granted until we face a situation when there is no power.
  • The U.S. electric grid loses power 285% more often today than it did in the year 1984, when the data collection effort on blackouts began.
  • And while numbers can certainly vary, in the first six months of the year 2014 alone, there were 130 reported grid outages.
  • With weather-related disruptions costing the most per event, power outages cost American businesses as much as $150 billion a year, according to the Department of Energy (DOE) reports.
  • The size of the generator that is needed can be easily determined by what it is intended to supply power to. For a tailgate party where you are running a video system and perhaps some warming trays, for example, you could get by with a generator that produces 1,000 watts. If you hope to run an entire household via generator during a power failure, however, you will need considerably more current.
  • Generator size calculators are a first step in knowing the size to purchase, but generator sellers and installers are also a valuable resource.
  • Even when your generator is not in use it is important to take the proper precautions. For instance, if you have a generator in storage and do not plan to use it within 30 days, it is essential to stabilize the gas with fuel stabilizer. Planning for unlikely events is not also the first think home owners think to do, but if you are not in the habit of making plans ahead of time you can, literally, be caught out in the cold.

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