Generator Installation in Parsonsfield, Maine

Parsonsfield is mostly forest, including about a fifth of the town inside the 8,603-acre Leavitt Plantation Forest, and power reaches its villages and farms on long lines through trees. That is the setup for long outages. When the April 4, 2024 snowstorm hit, CMP counted more than 90,000 of its nearly 129,000 York County customers in the dark and cautioned that getting everyone back could take five days. Go back further and the 1998 ice storm cut power to about 700,000 people across Maine, while the October 2017 windstorm, with its 400,000-plus outages, was the largest weather-related outage the state has recorded. Crews restore the main lines first, so houses at the far end of a long rural tap tend to wait longest.

Out here an outage shuts down much more than lamps. The well pump stops sending water, oil and propane boilers cannot run without power to their controls and circulators, and freezers and sump pumps go quiet. About 17 percent of homes in town burn wood, which keeps rooms warm but not the pipes in a cold corner. With an automatic transfer switch, a whole-home standby generator has those loads running again within seconds. The lower-cost option is a portable generator on an inlet and interlock kit, enough for the essentials and incapable of feeding current back into CMP’s lines while crews repair them. Keep any generator out of garages, barns and cellars; carbon monoxide collects even with the doors open.

Piped gas barely exists in Parsonsfield, so standby units burn propane, and the size of the tank sets how many days the house stays powered. Sizing begins with the surge a well pump draws when it starts and with the heating equipment, then adds the other real loads. The unit sits where its exhaust stays clear of windows and doors, and lots on Province Lake, Long Pond, West Pond or near the Ossipee may come under shoreland zoning or Saco River Corridor rules. Goodnow Electric installs the generator with its transfer switch or interlock, files the state electrical permit and books the inspection, with a free written estimate first and the owner on site. Adding only a transfer switch, with the service left as it is, does not bring in Maine’s outdoor emergency disconnect requirement.