Power Outage Preparedness: A Practical Checklist

By LumoWatt Editorial Team · Published 2026-08-02

Before an outage happens

Know where your electrical panel is and how to read it, so you (or an installer) can quickly identify which circuits matter most.
If you're considering a generator, get a realistic sense of your area's typical outage frequency and duration, this affects both whether a generator makes sense and how it should be sized. City and state pages on this site include real outage-risk context where it's available.
If anyone in the household depends on electrically powered medical equipment, see our guide on backup power for medical equipment and register with your utility's medical baseline program if one exists.

If you have a standby generator, it should start automatically, if it doesn't, that's the moment routine maintenance would have caught, see our maintenance guide.
If you have a portable generator, always run it outdoors with at least 3 to 4 feet of clearance on all sides, well away from windows, doors, and vents. Carbon monoxide risk is real: portable generators are responsible for more consumer carbon monoxide deaths than any other product tracked by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, an average of about 100 deaths a year in the US. See OSHA's generator safety guidance for the full precautions.
Avoid opening the refrigerator and freezer more than necessary. Per USDA/FoodSafety.gov guidance, a full freezer stays safe for about 48 hours unopened (24 hours if half full), while a refrigerator only holds a safe temperature for about 4 hours.

If your home has a generator, confirm it shuts back down correctly once utility power returns, this is part of what an automatic transfer switch is for.
Note anything that went wrong (a circuit that should have stayed on but didn't, a generator that struggled to start) and bring it up with your installer, since that's real, useful information for making sure it's right next time.

If repeated outages are pushing you toward a standby system, the generator sizing calculator is a reasonable place to start, followed by getting quotes from license-checked local installers.