Generator Installation in Kennebunk, Maine

The two storms of January 2024 showed how exposed Kennebunk's shore is. On January 13, a record tide of 14.57 feet was measured in Portland, and in Kennebunk and Kennebunkport fire officials asked residents near the water to stay on the second or third floor. The town tallied about $2 million in damage to roads, sidewalks and beach areas, much of it along the beaches. Inland, the usual threat is trees. Kennebunk Light & Power District runs a trimming program along its lines, but wet snow and wind still bring limbs down across roads from West Kennebunk to the Alewive farms.

A whole-home standby generator starts on its own within seconds of an outage and keeps the heating system, refrigerator, well pump and sump pump running. Fuel matters: about 18 percent of homes in town already use propane, and roughly 9 percent use utility gas, both of which can supply a standby unit without refueling during a long outage. For homes on oil, a propane tank sized for several days of generator run time is the usual answer. The alternative is an interlock kit or manual transfer switch with an outdoor inlet, so a portable generator can safely power chosen circuits without back-feeding the utility lines. That matters for the line crews working to restore power, since a generator plugged into a dryer outlet can energize the wires they are repairing.

Placement takes some thought in Kennebunk. Near the beaches and the tidal stretch of the Kennebunk and Mousam rivers, a generator pad may fall under shoreland zoning or floodplain rules, both administered by the town's Code Enforcement officers, and equipment in a flood zone should sit above the expected water level. Units also need clearance from windows, doors and property lines. Goodnow Electric sizes the load, installs the automatic transfer switch, and pulls the electrical permit with the town. A load calculation decides whether the generator carries the whole house or only the circuits that matter most in a winter outage, such as the boiler or furnace, the well pump, the refrigerator, a few lights and outlets, and the sump pump in a wet cellar.