One of the useful features I added to the Kuppersmith Project house is a whole house, standby generator. The generator runs on natural gas and uses a transfer switch mounted on the garage wall next to the power meter to automatically transfer power from the utility company to the generator in the event of a power outage.
Once electrical power to the house has been restored, the transfer switch automatically turns off the generator and restores power from the utility company to the house. Watch this video to find out more.
Further Information
- Advantages of an Automatic Standby Generator (video)
- How an Automatic Standby Generator Works (video)
- Installing a Whole House Generator for Your Home (video)
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Danny Lipford: The Kuppersmith Project is the renovation of an 85-year-old, classic, American Tudor home. While I want to keep its unique character, I also want to create a home with the kind of energy efficiency and functionality everyone has come to expect in the 21st century. Here’s a great example from Generac.
There’s something going on on every square inch of this project, inside and out, with the exception of this one little area. This is our access from the side of the house to the backyard, and there’s a lot of traffic going in and out of here. But there is a lot going on right here on the side of the garage. This is where we’ve been able to aggregate all of our utilities coming into the house, as well as a few controllers like the sprinkler controller here. This is the electrical sub panel. We have our phone system here. We have our cable system here, and of course our meter for our electric power that ties right into the transfer switch for our Generac generator that we have positioned behind the garage.
Now, this transfer switch as we mentioned in previous shows, whenever there’s a power outage here at the house, within just a few seconds this will activate the generator and provide power inside. But this does a little bit more than that, this is a Nexus Smart Switch and what it’ll do is actually monitor the usage or the demand on the generator, and in the event there is a lot of power being used maybe a lot of lights on, air conditioning, electric stove that type of thing. It’ll actually turn off one of those high users of electricity until the load subsides a little bit, and then it reactivates it. It’s a very smart way of going about not overloading your generator.
