Florida generator guide
What Size Whole-Home Generator Do I Need?
The honest answer to "what size do I need" is: it depends on what you want to run when the grid is down, and how your electrician decides to manage it. A 2,000-square-foot home and an 8,000-square-foot estate are different animals — and so are two identical houses with different air conditioning. Here's how the sizing really works.
About five minutes. No salesman, no all-day window.
Start with what you want to keep on
There are two honest answers. Keep the whole house running like nothing happened, or carry the things that matter — air conditioning, kitchen, well or sump, medical equipment, a few rooms — and let the rest wait. Both are valid. The first costs more because it sizes for everything at once.
Service size and air conditioning drive it
Your electrical service (often 200 amps, sometimes 400 on bigger homes) and your air-conditioning load are the heavy hitters. Central Florida homes lean hard on AC, and a compressor's startup surge is what really sets the floor on generator size.
This is why two homes the same square footage can need different units — the one with two large variable-speed systems asks more of the generator than the one with a single stage unit.
Load management can right-size a big home
Here's the part the size charts skip: you don't always need a giant generator to power a big home. An automatic load-management module cycles large loads — say two air conditioners — so they don't all hit the generator at the same instant. That can let a properly sized air-cooled unit carry a home that a naive calculation says needs a much larger, much more expensive liquid-cooled machine.
GENERasic builds that decision in. It won't oversell you a commercial-grade unit when load management on a smaller one does the job — and it won't undersize you into a generator that trips when the AC kicks on.
Common questions
Can a smaller generator really run my whole house?
Often, yes — with automatic load management that staggers big loads like air conditioners so they never hit the generator simultaneously. It's frequently the difference between a right-sized air-cooled unit and a far more expensive liquid-cooled one.
Does a 400-amp service mean I need a liquid-cooled generator?
No. A large service doesn't force a liquid-cooled unit by itself — an air-cooled generator with load management can carry many large homes. The managed load, not the panel rating alone, is what decides.
How does GENERasic size my generator without a site visit?
It derives your home's square footage and year from the county tax roll, reads your meter and panel from your photos, and applies the same load logic an experienced installer uses — then the on-site visit confirms it.
Stop reading ranges. Get your number.
GENERasic pulls the real property, flood, and elevation data for your exact address and returns one all-in installed price — sized to your home, your fuel, and your flood elevation. The vetted local installer confirms it on site.
Get your installed price →