On Mon, 08 Sep 2008 12:55:34 -0400, wrote:

(ridiculous!) I plan to do it again, esp. since I have two 200 Amp panels,

Your house must be way cool!

In my situation, I do not want a gen large enough to power the whole house
so I won't use autostart anyway. I will manually turn off the HVAC brakers
before starting the gen. Then everything else in my house will have power
available, even if I cannot run it all at the same time.

I don't understand why anyone would want to select the circuits on the
generator. To me, having the whole panel on the generator would be
much easier to set up and much more flexible.

If the generator doesn't auto start, and I have never seen one that
did, then you can shed which loads you want to lock out, and the
family knows to be careful when the power is out.

The one time the daughter uses the blow dryer, and everything goes
dark would be enough reminder. The breaker lets you safely test the
limits.