Thinking Of Buying A Generator? What You Need to Know

If you are one of the many people who are considering the purchase of a generator for your home or business, that is a very wise move. We all know that the cost of electricity is going to go through the roof in the next few weeks, thanks in part to a certain Russian gentleman, but it is not just that. The threat of power outages seems also to be greater, and without power you can hardly do anything at all these days.

Sure, your laptop may run for a few hours. That’s fine if the outage is only for a few hours. But then what do you do? You just have to sit there twiddling your thumbs and praying that the lights come on again.

But if you have your own generator, you have no issues at all. You fire up the generator and away you go. You can just carry on as though nothing has happened and keep going until the mains power comes back on. So, it won’t cause any interruptions.

Generator Costs Can Vary

Generator costs can vary considerably depending upon the amount of power that you need to produce. You have to allow for the cost of installation by an expert electrician, but that aside, you can buy a 1kw generator for as little as £300 or so. That is not exactly a huge amount of power, but the amount that you need, and therefore the size of generator that you need, can be calculated by an electrician. You need a generator of the appropriate size.

You will also need a transfer switch, and this can either be manual or automatic. If you have a manual switch, it means that someone has to be on the premises to switch off from the mains, then fire up the generator, and then switch over to it.

An automatic transfer switch does this for you. It notes that the power from the mains has gone down and will send a signal to the generator to start. When the generator is up and running it sends a signal back to the automatic transfer switch which then changes over to the generator. This means that there will be a short break in the power supply while the generator runs up, but the lights will be back on in a few seconds.