Reliable Power Solutions
Reviews and buying guides for home, camping, and emergency generators, backed by real installed costs and hands-on testing.
Power outages can hit without warning, whether from a storm, grid strain, or routine maintenance. The right generators keep your fridge running, your phones charged, and your home comfortable until the power comes back. Below, we break down home and camping generators by size, fuel type, and use case, plus a full buyer’s guide to whole-home standby generators for anyone planning for longer outages. Not sure how many watts you actually need? Try our generator wattage calculator to size the right unit for your setup.
Table of Contents
Choosing Between Home and Camping Generators
Camping generators are typically small, portable, and inverter-based, built to run sensitive electronics quietly for a weekend trip. Home standby and portable generators are sized to cover essential circuits or an entire house during a multi-day outage. Whichever type you choose, always run it outdoors and away from windows and doors; carbon monoxide poisoning is one of the most common generator-related safety risks, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Sizing the Right Backup Power for Your Home or Trip
Sizing backup power comes down to running watts, not the peak/surge number printed biggest on the box. Add up the running wattage of everything you actually want powered at once — a fridge, a few lights, a window AC unit, a laptop charger — and buy some headroom above that total, since motors on things like refrigerators and air conditioners draw a brief surge of extra power when they first kick on. For a full-house standby setup, an electrician can calculate your home’s actual load; for camping or a partial-home backup, most portable units list both running and starting watts right on the spec sheet, which is usually enough to size against on your own.
Portable vs. Standby Generators: Fuel and Installation
Portable generators run on gasoline, propane, or both (dual-fuel), get wheeled or carried to where you need them, and plug directly into whatever you’re powering — no installation required, which is why they cover both camping and short home outages. Standby generators are permanently installed outside the house, wired into your electrical panel through a transfer switch, and start automatically within seconds of a power loss, typically running on natural gas or a large propane tank. That automatic, whole-house coverage is also why standby units cost significantly more and need a licensed electrician for installation — portable units trade some of that convenience for a much lower price and the flexibility to bring it wherever it’s actually needed.
Curious what standby ownership actually looks like day to day? We put our own Honeywell 22kW standby generator through four real outages and wrote up the true installed cost, startup speed, and maintenance.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many watts do I need to run my whole house?
Most homes need somewhere between 5,000 and 7,500 running watts to cover essential circuits (fridge, well pump, some lights and outlets), while a whole-house standby unit covering everything, including central AC, often needs 20,000 watts or more. An electrician can calculate your exact load from your panel, which is worth doing before buying a standby unit specifically.
Can I run a generator indoors or in a garage?
No — portable units produce carbon monoxide and should only run outdoors, well away from windows, doors, and vents, per CPSC guidance linked above. This applies even with the garage door open; carbon monoxide can still build up to dangerous levels in an attached space.
What’s the difference between a generator and a power station?
A traditional generator burns fuel (gas, propane, or diesel) to produce power on demand and can typically run for as long as you keep feeding it more. A portable power station is a large rechargeable battery with no engine and no fumes, which makes it safe to use indoors, but it holds a fixed amount of power and needs to be recharged once it’s drained.
How often should I run a standby generator to keep it ready?
Most standby units run a short self-test automatically every week or two, but it’s still worth checking on it periodically — a dead battery or low fuel is the most common reason a standby unit fails to start during an actual outage, and both are easy to catch ahead of time.
Which is better for camping, a small generator or a power station?
For a weekend trip charging phones, running a fan, or powering a small cooler, a power station is quieter, lighter, and needs no fuel. For longer trips or heavier loads like a camper’s AC unit, a small inverter model delivers more sustained power — see our camping generator picks for options built specifically for that use case.