During An Outage? (NAPSA)—With more and more choices available in automatic home standby power, selecting the right backup power system can be confusing. Here are three important things to think about when considering an automatic standby power system: * Backing up only the essentials. Are there a couple of rooms, or maybe a handful of appliances—yourrefrigerator, freezer, sump pump, furnace, and well pump, for example—that are the most important items for you to have during a power outage? You can work with your generator dealer or electrician to back up only the circuits that power them. This means investing in a relatively small home standby generator—perhaps a 7- or 11-kW unit— to protect your home. *Backing up your whole home with a smart power management system. If you want all your lights and appliances running just as they would on a normal day, you can invest in an automatic standby generator with a smart power management system. This system can monitor the power you’re using, and if there’s a risk of overloading the generator, it will simply turn off the most power-hungry appliances. Most of the time, these are central air conditioners. When generator capacity returns, the system will turn those appliances back on. Such systems are ideal for homes up to about 3,000 Whenthelights go out in a storm or blackout, a backup power system can bevital. square feet with no more than two three-ton central air conditioners. The generators can be as small as 11 kW, with 20- or 22-kW genera- tors among the most popular. *Complete whole-house backup. Want to back up your entire home, with the ability to power every appliance all the time? You can invest in an automatic standby generator that delivers enough power to do just that. For homes up to 3,000 square feet, a 16- through 22-kKW unit can suffice, while others— large custom homes and those with many power-hungry appliances such as two or morecentral air conditioners—will require generators that are larger. To learn which backup power solution is right for you, visit the Generac website at www.generac. com.
