Generator Installation in Berwick, Maine

Outside the village, a Berwick power outage usually starts with a tree. Many of the town’s roads run through woods, and a limb on a service drop or a tree across a line can leave a neighborhood dark for hours or days after a big storm. Statewide, the record came in October 2017, when wind cut service to upward of 400,000 Maine accounts and left some dark for more than a week, and York County sat inside the federal disaster declaration after the January 2024 storms. CMP rebuilds the lines, and a generator carries the house in the meantime.

What needs to run depends on the house. Maine Water supplies the village mains under contract with the town, but homes beyond them draw water from wells, and a submersible well pump is often the largest motor load a generator must start. Heating matters too. Most Berwick homes heat with oil or propane, and those boilers and furnaces need electricity for their burners, circulators and blowers, while the 11 percent of homes that heat with wood may still need power for a fan or a backup system. Adding those loads up is what sets the generator’s size and settles whether a whole-home standby unit or an essential-circuits unit makes sense.

Fuel is simpler here than in some towns. Unitil’s list of Maine gas communities does not include Berwick, so standby generators almost always run on propane, with the tank sized for several days of running. An automatic transfer switch separates the house from CMP’s lines so generator power cannot feed back onto them, and a portable unit gets the same protection from a panel interlock paired with an inlet box on the outside wall. Mobile homes need a transfer arrangement that fits their pole or pedestal service. Any building permit comes from Berwick’s code office; Goodnow Electric works out the load, puts in the switch and wiring, and takes care of whatever permits apply, starting from a free written estimate. A standby unit wants its scheduled exercise runs and a yearly service, and a portable one belongs outdoors, well clear of windows, doors and the garage.