Top Rated Generators

It is very easy to take for granted an emergency generator, is sits quietly outside always watching, time passes and you think why I bother having that thing. Then one bitterly cold winter when the temperature has been below freezing for days, a fierce storm rolls in, and bang lightening hits a sub station. All the relays blow and the neighbourhood is plunged into darkness.

Worry not! 20 seconds later old faithful kicks in, all the lights come back and the boiler starts putting out heat again. Next door however are running around trying to find that box of candles. Even though their heating is gas, the heating controller is of course electric, so the house gets colder and colder, not a pleasant thing to come home from work too.

Amazingly useful in the humble home, consider how important they are in the commercial environment, and in hospitals they are an essential life saving facilty. Think of the food store owner, all that food, his livelihood sitting in freezers, out go the lights off goes his freezers, its not long before all that food is ruined. With an emergency generator of course all is well, the freezers stay cold.

An emergency generator can be considered, a one time investment. They are designed to operate when the mains power supply is interrupted. Emergency power generators are available in models from 7 kW to 1,750 kW, at the smaller end is the home generator needed to run lights heater, even the TV to the higher power end designed to keep hospitals running.

Upon loss of power standby generators are immediately activated, and without 20-30secs have power back into the building. They are hardwired into a building’s electrical system, for larger units the fuel source is gas from the cities gas pipes, and for smaller more remote units a separate fuel tank is used.

An automatic transfer switch allows switching from utility power to emergency generator power. Any anomaly such as voltage sags, brownouts, spikes or surges will cause the internal circuitry to trigger the generator to start up. The building power demand is transferred to the emergency generator once additional switch circuitry has determined the generator has the proper voltage and frequency, allowing for an almost seamless transfer to standby power.

For a home based system a portable generator may be all that is required to maintain a constant supply of power. Either using a simple transfer switch or simply using extension cords and powering all devices separately.

The range of generators is huge, ranging from small almost silent running devices that will fit in a suitcase to huge units half the size of a house that are designed to power hospitals.