Standby generator installation in New Orleans

By Torriono Kelly, master electrician · New Orleans, LA · License #03LEL16537

In New Orleans a generator is not a luxury item, it is the difference between riding out four days of no power at home and packing the car. The install is what decides whether it actually starts when you need it.

Fuel

Natural gas or propane

On-site time

1–3 days depending on scope

Estimate

Free, on site

Two honest options, at very different prices

Most people call asking about a whole-home standby unit because that is what the ads show. It is often the right answer. It is not always the right answer, and the cheaper option is worth hearing first.

A portable generator with a proper interlock kit and inlet box. Far cheaper than a standby system, and that assumes you already own or will buy the generator itself. You start it yourself, you refuel it, and you pick which circuits run. It covers a refrigerator, some lights, fans, a window unit and your phones. For a lot of households that is genuinely enough, and it is a quarter of the cost.

A whole-home standby unit with an automatic transfer switch. The larger investment of the two. It runs on natural gas or propane, it starts itself within seconds of an outage whether or not you are home, and it can carry central air. If you have someone in the house on medical equipment, if you travel, or if you are not going to be the person outside in a storm pull-starting a motor, this is the one.

What we will not do is quote you the expensive one without telling you the cheap one exists.

The part that matters most: sizing

An undersized generator is the most common problem we get called out to fix, and it is always someone else's install. It runs fine until the air conditioning compressor tries to start, then it stalls or nuisance-trips. Sizing comes from a load calculation, not from the square footage of the house and not from what the neighbor bought.

The calculation has to account for starting current, which for an air conditioning compressor is several times its running current for a moment. That momentary draw is what sinks an undersized unit.

What a proper install includes

• Load calculation and unit sizing against what you actually want running, not a guess.
• The transfer switch. Automatic for standby, a mechanical interlock for portable. Either way it has to make it physically impossible to backfeed the utility line. Backfeeding kills linemen. This is not a corner anyone gets to cut, and an extension cord run into a dryer outlet is exactly that corner.
• The pad and the setback. Standby units need a level base and a required clearance from windows, doors and vents, because the exhaust is carbon monoxide.
• Fuel. Natural gas or propane. The gas line and its sizing are a licensed gas fitter's work, coordinated with ours — a generator on an undersized gas line starves under load.
• Permit and inspection through the City of New Orleans, same as any other service work.
• A load test before we leave, so the first time it runs is not the first night of the storm.

Timing, in a city with a season

The worst time to buy a generator is the week a storm is named. Units go out of stock regionally, every electrician in the metro is booked, and permit offices are dealing with the same surge. Hurricane season here runs June through November and peaks in September. The install to plan is the one that happens in February.

If you already have a unit sitting in the garage from last year, it needs to be started and run under load periodically or it will not be there for you. A standby unit exercises itself weekly; a portable does not.

After the storm

If your generator will not start or will not carry the load during an outage, we take those calls. See 24/7 emergency service. If your panel or meter took water or wind damage, that is a service repair question first — a generator cannot feed a damaged panel safely.

Recent work

Every photo below is a TK Electric job in the New Orleans area, not stock photography.

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Common questions