Is an inverter generator worth the extra money?

If anything you power has a screen, or anyone nearby has ears, usually yes. The 3% vs 25% THD difference protects electronics, and the 20 dB noise difference is the difference between running overnight and getting the cord pulled by your household. For a fridge-and-pump-only storm kit, the open frame does the same job for half the price.

How much does a whole-house standby generator cost installed?

Between $9,000 and $18,000 for the common 14 to 26 kW air-cooled sizes: roughly $4,000 to $7,000 of machine and the rest in transfer switch, pad, gas line, and electrician. Load management modules ($200 to $500 each) that shed the water heater or AC often pay for themselves by dropping the unit one size.

Can a portable generator do what a standby does?

While you are home and awake, most of it: an interlock lets a 7,500W portable feed the same panel. What it cannot do is start itself. If the outage begins while you are at work and the sump pump matters, the difference between the two is your basement. That single scenario sells most standby units.

Portable vs Standby vs Inverter: Which Type

Portables are the cheap watts, inverters are the quiet clean watts, standby units are the automatic watts. Prices per usable watt run roughly $0.15 for open-frame portables, $0.35 to $0.50 for inverters, and $2 or more installed for standby. Pick by what failure costs you, not by what the sale price says.

Open-frame portables: watts by the pound

The 3,500 to 12,000W frames at every box store. A 6,500W unit around $600 to $900 carries a house's essentials through an interlock, which is the best value in backup power, full stop. The costs are noise (70 to 80 dB, a lawnmower that never finishes), 100-plus pounds, manual everything (you're outside in the storm with a pull cord and a gas can), and rougher power: voltage and frequency wander enough that the spec sheet politely calls it under 25% THD. Fridges and pumps don't care. Some electronics do.

Inverters: the refined half of portable

Same fuel, different electricity. The engine drives a generator whose output is rectified and re-synthesized as a clean sine wave, under 3% THD, safe for anything with a plug. Because output is synthesized, the engine can throttle to match load, which is where the quiet comes from: 50 to 60 dB at half load, half a day on a gallon. You pay double per watt and the big ones stop around 7,000W. The 2,200W suitcase class owns camping and tailgates; paralleled pairs cover RVs; a 4,500W inverter with a 240V outlet is the premium essentials-at-home pick for light sleepers.

Standby: the one that works when you're not home

Permanently installed, propane or natural gas fed, automatic transfer switch: the power blinks, ten seconds later the house is back, with nobody home to notice it happened. Air-cooled units run 10 to 26 kW; installed prices land $9,000 to $18,000 depending on gas line and panel work. It's the only option that protects an empty house (sump pumps, freezers, pipes in January), the only one that starts itself weekly as a self-test, and the only one that runs central AC without drama. It is also very expensive per outage hour if your grid fails one evening a year.

The decision rules

Outages measured in hours and a budget measured in hundreds: open-frame portable plus interlock. Sleep, neighbors, or electronics on the list: inverter, one class up from the math. House regularly empty, medical equipment, sump-dependent basement, or outages measured in days: standby, sized by the whole-house calculator and an installer's real load calc. Renters and apartment dwellers: a power station plus the biggest inverter the balcony rules allow, which rounds to "the quiet aisle" of the same decision.

The mixed answer is underrated: a standby-priced budget often buys an inverter for the day-to-day plus a big dumb portable for the once-a-decade ice storm, with money left for the electrician.