AFAIK, the only way to get good clean power for use with delicate
electronic equipment -- and I wasn't including a thermostat in that
category -- is by using a generator that incorporates an inverter, such
as the Honda EUx000i series; Yamaha makes similar models. Our amateur
radio club used a couple of EU1000i generators for Field Day (operation
in a temporary location with emergency power -- practice for emergency
situations) last June without frying any of our expensive transceivers.

If we do get a generator for emergency use at home, I might settle for
one of the cheaper ones for the furnace, refrigerator, freezer and
lights, and get a small one with "clean" power for the computers, radio,
TV, etc.

We've been in this location for only a year, during which time we lost
power for a few hours when the wind blew down some power lines. One of
the locals told me they lost power only once in 14 years -- but that
outage lasted 3 days.

Perce


On 12/17/04 01:11 pm GTO69RA4 tossed the following ingredients into the
ever-growing pot of cybersoup:

But 300 hours may represent many years of occasional use. If, OTOH,
these cheap motors are not good enough to run for 5 or 6 hours at a time
without crapping out, that's a different story.

The biggest problem with residential generators is the quality of the output
signal. Some electronics, including stuff you'd want to run in a power outage
(range, furnace thermostat) can be fried by dirty AC. Those same generators are
fine for running portable tools and other simple devices.

I so far haven't seen companies advertising any of specs as far as how good the
output is.