It's not plug and play.
I agree. Fourteen years ago I installed two stacked trace inverters for our backup power system. I needed the 10KW inrush power for the well. I power 10 critical circuits with 8-L16 batteries and use the generator only to charge the batteries.
The maintenance and setup is much more complicated then most people would understand. The development of the
BatteryMinder units has at least reduced the deep cycle battery work.
I cringe when I read stories of people running their gasoline generators 24/7. Most likely the generators will not last and it is a total waste of gasoline. I can get by on slightly less than one gallon a day. In a SHTF scenario the solar panels will go up, but not until then.
People really need to learn about electricity and power consumption. They would be pleasantly surprised to find out that you can live comfortably with 5KW a day or less.
I can run my 4.5 kva genset for about 2 hours a day and keep everything humming along here without a problem if the sun isn't shining.
If I want to keep the freezer frozen... after the 1st day, I hook up the genset, and run it until the compressor in the freezer shuts down. Then I shut down the gentset. Doesn't take long. Just listening to the load on the genset will tell you when that happens.
I don't need idle standby in a situation where gas is in short supply.
/johnny