Ask anyone in Fairfield who sat through a public safety power shutoff what they remember, and the answers line up: a warming refrigerator, a dark hallway, a hot night with no fan. Plenty of them bought a portable generator afterward. Then the next shutoff came, and they learned the hard part was never the generator. It was getting its power into the house safely.

There are two sound ways to do that and a handful of dangerous ones. Which sound way fits your home comes down to your panel, what has to keep running, and how much you want to handle yourself when the lights go out.

An inlet and interlock at the garage panel

For a homeowner who already owns a portable generator, the simplest permanent setup is an inlet and an interlock. The inlet is a weatherproof connector mounted on the outside wall, usually near a garage panel. A heavy cord runs from the generator to that inlet, and from there the power feeds a breaker set aside for it in the main panel.

The interlock is a sliding plate fastened to the panel cover. It makes it physically impossible to switch on the generator breaker while the main breaker is on. That small piece of metal keeps your generator from pushing power back out onto PG&E’s lines, where a lineworker may be repairing what they believe is a dead wire.

During a shutoff, you roll the generator outside, plug the cord into the generator and the inlet, start it, turn the main off, turn the generator breaker on, and then switch on the circuits you chose ahead of time.

Label the generator breaker and every circuit on your short list, and keep the switchover steps written on a card inside the panel door. In the dark, holding a flashlight in one hand, nobody should have to recall the order of five switches.

When a standby unit earns its place

A standby generator sits on a pad outside, runs on natural gas or propane, and starts by itself when utility power drops. An automatic transfer switch moves the house onto the generator, then back again once PG&E restores service. Nobody needs to be home, and nobody drags a portable unit out of the garage in the dark.

That matters most for households with someone on medical equipment, people who travel often, and anyone who would rather not manage a generator at two in the morning. It is a bigger project. The gas line and the unit’s placement get handled with the right trades, the generator is sized to the house, and the permit and inspection cover both the electrical connection and where the unit sits.

For a lot of Fairfield homes, the inlet and interlock is the sensible first step, and a standby system comes later, once the family knows what it really needs during an outage.

Picking the circuits worth carrying

A portable generator cannot run a whole house, and many standby units are not sized to either. The useful question is what you need during a shutoff, which is a much shorter list than what the house draws on an ordinary afternoon. Most families are surprised by how short.

The short list most homes carry through a shutoff

• The refrigerator and any freezer in the garage.
• A sump pump or well pump, where the property has one.
• Medical devices that need power around the clock.
• A few lights, the internet router and phone chargers.
• The furnace blower, or a fan on a hot night.

Central air is usually the load that breaks the plan. Summer shutoffs are exactly when everyone wants it, and its starting surge is often more than a portable unit can handle. I go through your list, check what each item draws when it starts and while it runs, and make sure the generator you own or plan to buy can carry it with room left over.

The dryer outlet trick and the cord through the window

Every outage season somebody plugs a generator into a dryer receptacle with a homemade cord that has a plug on both ends. It feeds the panel backward through a circuit never meant to carry power that direction. Nothing stops that power from flowing out to the utility lines, and the exposed prongs on the loose end are live the instant the generator runs. Please do not do this.

A cord run through a window is less dangerous and still a problem. Long, thin extension cords heat up under load, a window propped open for a cord will not lock, and the generator tends to end up close to the house. Generator exhaust carries carbon monoxide, which drifts in through open windows, doors and vents faster than people expect. The generator belongs outdoors, well away from every opening, every time it runs.

Permit, inspection and a practice run

Both setups are permitted work through the City of Fairfield, and the inspector checks the inlet, the breaker, the interlock or transfer switch, and the grounding. Once the job passes, do a practice run of your own: connect the generator, switch the house over, bring the chosen circuits up, then switch back. The first time you do that should be on a calm afternoon, long before the next shutoff.

Sizing, standby units and transfer switches are covered on our generator installation in Fairfield page. If your panel has no room left for a generator breaker, our page on Fairfield panel upgrades explains what comes first. Call (707) 803-6332 or book through the contact page, and the Fairfield page has more about the rest of our work in town.