Home Generator: Selecting, Sizing And Connecting: The Complete Guide

Most residential electrical lines in the US use overhead wires. An addition to this, the infrastructure of our power grid keeps deteriorating. Therefore, widespread power outages will likely continue. For many homeowners who do not have a technical background, choosing a backup power system can be challenging.

That's why I came up with this guide. Most generator guides you find online are written either by content writers who tell you just general things or by salespeople who promote their products. I’m an electrical engineer with over 35 years of experience in power electronics. My guide provides the practical information from an engineer's standpoint that you need to know to choose the right emergency power generator for your needs and determine the most suitable way to connect it safely. This book discusses selection of standby and portable electric generators in minute detail. It also presents an overview of battery-based backup systems. For each type of electric generators this Home Generator Guide provides principles of operation, pros and cons, lesser known details, charts with comparative characteristics of the popular brands, cost estimation, step-by-step sizing procedure and transfer switch wiring options. The book also explains some common mistakes made in determining the required generator size. In conclusion I offer my generator picks depending on your requirements and budget. This guide for the price of a few cups of coffee may save you thousands of dollars and hours of research.

The book focuses primarily on the North American split-phase 120/240 V electrical system. Note this is not a DIY guide- look inside the book to preview pages.

You can download a free sample chapter of the book that describes the GFCI issue. For those who don't know, many portable generators are equipped with so-called Ground Fault Circuit Interrupt (GFCI), a.k.a Ground Fault Interrupter (GFI) to meet OSHA requirements for construction sites. When you are trying to connect such a generator to a transfer switch, GFCI will trip and no outlet will function. This chapter explains the issue and describes the solutions.

Besides Amazon, this book is available in an electronic form on Apple Books and Google Play Books. You can easily read it on your phone. If you choose to get the ebook in pdf format, be sure your viewer settings is "Original pages" rather than "Flowing text".