Hurricane Irene

That makes sense, there would not be the issue of stale gasoline or Diesel.

Natural gas would be great for generator, I've never seen gas shut off unless they were working on our hot water heater.

I don't suppose it would be cheaper to generate your own power with gas as opposed to buying from the utility.

I have a Generac 17k model and they are amazing. Fully automatic operation, kicks on within 15 seconds and waits a few minutes to monitor voltage srability before auto shut off. It has digital screen to monitor all functions and service issues, runs at your selected time 15min weekly to lube, charge battery and check for any potential issues. I have my entire home on it aswell as 220 line for my barn. I even had electric stove and dryer plus normal activity on it before with no hicup. If you have everything on you may see it brown down but I mean a big load. You can have an entire home normal power on with zero hassle.
Factor $5k for unit and install then enjoy, money very well spent!

Thanks for chiming in Slipknot and Chadnliz. Chad has a nice setup. That functionality used to cost closer to $10K. I stayed with an 8 kW portable generator that runs on gas. It has electric start (you do need this!) and feeds a 10-circuit manual trans-switch. We don't have the stove, A/C, and washer/dryer in the circuits but the well and pretty much everything else is. Things are pretty "rural" around here so any propane use takes the large tank in the yard. Our neighbor has one for their gas appliances. We do use heating oil so I suppose that could be used as a source, but then you would be working against yourself in the winter when most of our outages occur. But if you're going for the Full Monty generac putting in a tank shouldn't be that big of a deal.

I can even listen to my stereo on the generator. YOu can hear it running in the background when the music is quiet but it definitely sounds great, better than the power company sounds. :-)

My neighbor put one of these in during the Y2K paranoia. It's a large, very robust looking unit, sitting on a concrete slab, powered by an underground propane tank. If I remember correctly, it was something like $25K - $30K at the time.

It comes on like clockwork every time the power goes out on our street(seems to happened more in the past 2 years), and it's the first thing I listen for (despite the distance between our homes, it's easy to hear) when my lights go out to know whether it's just me or the whole neighborhood. From what I can tell, it comes on immediately. I mean, so quickly, that I'm not even sure one would have to reset their digital clocks.

Interestingly enough, he passed on almost two years ago (VERY unique and interesting guy, who founded the Philadelphia Folk Festival, and owned a bar called The Main Point which often featured such unknowns as Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel and made both staples here in the Philadelphia area well before they reached national acclaim), and the subject came up when his widow and I were talking about a month ago. She considers it a colossal waste; a needless and worthless extravagance, and disagreed with my opinion that it was a nice thing to have. Even he was laughing at himself on January 2, 2000. However, after reading some of the thoughts in this thread, more than ever, I think it would be a decent buy.

My unit is hooked up to natural gas line and its nit as loud as one would think. Its a 37hp motor I think and with the sound insulation its as loud as a average small lawn tractor, a bit quieter I think.
After living through the Aug 13 2003 massive power failure it seems easy to assume that a identical or worse event could happen with our overloaded antiquated grid.
I must admit its a shameful but great feeling seeing everyone in darkness while you sit in comfort lol but the neighbors know in event of need the are welcome here. We are in country so not even water can be had during a power loss.
Generac units look nice, take up no more space then a average AC unit and while $5000 isnt cheap the first time you need it feels really good!