I live in a neighborhood that is about 27 years old. Of all of the places I have lived, this one has the flakiest power. I presume it must have something to do with the age of equipment, maturity of trees, and Midwest storms. We have had several 4h, 6h, and even a few 12h+ power outages. These longer ones have resulted in a few situations where we had lost the contents of our refrigerator and freezer. Feeding a family of seven required a fair amount of food and subsequent meal planning and storage.
After losing hundreds of dollars in food, we decided to get a generator. I didn’t know at the time, but you can get generators that run on both gasoline and propane. Propane is what works for me as we always have a spare tank and there are usually two other tanks in the grill and outdoor fire table. This gives plenty of fuel to cover our average incident. The main problem we have though is it can get messy to run cords from place to place. You must run the generator outside and then string cords to the kitchen refrigerator and garage refrigerator and freezer.
Since our garage drywall was already torn up due to the kitchen refresh, I decided to go for a better solution to this in the form of a transfer switch. This device moves various circuits out from the main panel into a separate panel which is fed from either the main or your generator. This prevents a situation where the power is out and you run your generator without sending current back into the lines which could be dangerous to utility workers.
The panel and work to move the circuits was not cheap. Watching the electrician do his work, I was very happy to let him navigate reworking the old wires and test everything all while keeping it up to code. It was also exciting to see a 40 year veteran electrician cut a live wire and cause a loud pop. At least we know the fuses work well.
In the event of a power outage, I just need to pull the generator out, fire it up, and connect it to the external 220 inlet. The transfer switch does the rest. My sump pump, home internet, furnace, kitchen refrigerator, garage refrigerator/freezer, kitchen lights, and kitchen microwave are all powered. I will need to periodically test the generator and would like to build a housing so I can run it during storms and have something to chain it to so that the more amateur thief will avoid taking it.