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I bought a Firman Tri Power 9400 watt generator (Costco on sale $799). It will run on gas, propane or natural gas. I had an electrician wire my house and a plumber hook up the quick connect natural gas fitting. Total expenditure of around $1400. I have 7 20# propane tanks that I collected every time someone throws away an old BBQ pit. Sam's has a swap out that does not involve any employee contact. I also have a 450 watt generator that I used during the freeze. It kept my refrigerators cold, powered a small heater and would power a coffee pot or small microwave. You must have spare oil. My small generator shut down after about 25 hours of continuous running. It was low on oil. If you have to run a generator for a week you will need several quarts of oil.

I just had an electrician install the 30 amp plug on my house and I just bought a 9400 watt surge/8000 watts dual fuel portable generator. My water heater, home heater and dryer are gas. My range top and oven are electric. I just changed out all my light bulbs to LEDs at 7w each. (Amazon has a 24 pack for $19) During this last freeze, I ran a 4500/3600 generator and I powered a 12,000btu heat pump, 1 refrigerator, a coffee pot and some lights. I also had hooked up a space heater in a 3 side covered breezeway for some feral cats. I figure with the 7500 watt, I can run my furnace blower, 2 refrigerators, a microwave and most the lights in my house. In summer, I can run 3 window units, a microwave, 2 refrigerators and all my lights. I paid $400 for the electrician and $900 for the generator. I already have about 15, 5 gallon gas cans and just bought 3 more at Walmart. The generator burns about 16 gallons a day so I have about 6 days with gas and 1 more day with the propane. There is a kit offered for the portable generator to hook up natural gas. The problem with that is the power loss on the generator. Natural gas loses about 30% of the power. I had an estimate of $12,000 for a 20KW Generac whole home system and it will be August before they can install it.