Generator Installation in Westbrook, Maine

A full oil tank does not keep a house warm during an outage. The burner, the circulator pumps and the controls on a boiler or furnace all run on electricity, and in Westbrook almost half of occupied homes heat with oil, so a winter power failure means no heat for most of the city unless something else can run that equipment. Another sixth of homes heat with electricity outright, which makes an outage even more immediate. The October 2017 windstorm showed how long that can last: more than 400,000 Maine outages, some of them stretching past a week, the largest weather-related outage the state had recorded.

Water is less of a worry in most of the city than in the rural towns to the west. The Portland Water District has served Westbrook since its early years, drawing from Sebago Lake, so most homes are not depending on a well pump. Basement sump pumps, refrigerators, freezers and medical devices are what usually go on the essential list. Fuel choices are good here: Unitil’s gas system serves Westbrook, so a standby generator can run on natural gas where a main passes the house, and propane, already the heating fuel for about 11 percent of homes, covers streets without gas. Standby units also need a level pad, clearance from windows and doors, and a spot where snow sliding off the roof will not bury the air intake.

The type of building changes the design. A duplex metered separately for each apartment cannot share one transfer switch, so the owner either equips both services or picks the unit whose furnace and freezer matter most. For a manufactured home, the transfer switch generally goes at the outdoor service equipment rather than inside. For a smaller budget, an interlock kit and a power inlet let a portable generator feed chosen circuits safely; backfeeding through a dryer outlet is never safe for the household or for line crews. Goodnow Electric sizes each system to the real loads and handles the electrical permit through Westbrook Code Enforcement. A yearly test under load, ideally before the first winter storm, is the simplest way to know it will start when it is needed.