They aren't cheap. I have a 15KW Generac Standby Gen and they are about $4K minus the electrician to wire it. We got ours after a couple bad storms (Irene and Sandy) hit us up here and left us without power for several days. Two years ago when the tornado hit us, it took down 11 trees on our property, took out 2 utility poles on our pvt road and left us without power for a week. We live in a Pine/Hemlock forest and trees come down and take out our power lines all too often and then there are the ice storms . We are the only ones in our neighborhood to have a standby generator and we had neighbors coming over for showers, drinking water (we are all on wells) etc. IMO, the peace of mind and feeling of independence is worth it. Sitting in a hot or cold house and losing everything in your freezer is no fun.
They ever hear of buried power lines?
That's easy to do if the development is in an former pasture or if the land has been cleared by a developer. In the forest where I live, to bury the lines one would have to cut thru so many roots and go around so many trees, it's dang near impossible. There's no way the power company will do that for us and we would never get the 7 homeowners who live off our road to agree to pay the cost to have it done. All the lines along the town/county roads are on utility poles too and those lines go down as much as the ones in our little grove neighborhood.
