It has been many years... maybe 12?? ..since our last major outage. After that week long experience we put in a generator system that keeps us happy during outages.
One thing that I meant to mention in my initial post was what I consider the most important piece of safety equipment... a decent head lamp for hands free operation. I bought mine through Amazon. It cost about $25. It has a band that can go around a hat. It uses two 16500 Lithium Ion batteries, with very powerful LEDs. It gives a lot of light for hours, and I have extra batteries.
We have had our 5000 watt generator for 30 years. We have used it 24 hours a day for a week on several occasions. When we first got it they were almost an oddity for home owners. They are actually cheaper these days than when we bought it.
I never expected it to last so long. It has a completely normal looking 10 HP Briggs and Stratton engine that is supposedly industrial quality with a cast iron sleeve. It does not start as easy as it once does but the darn thing just keeps going and going. Running it mostly on Natural Gas may have helped increase its longevity.
I made my own venturi adapter out of nylon using my 3-D Printer to suck the Natural Gas. It just bolts onto the end of the carburetor and I put a motorcycle air filter on the end of it. All that is needed in addition to the venturi is an $80 low pressure natural gas regulator, some hose and fittings. I already had a tee with a valve and quick connect at my meter to use with the BBQ.
The power goes out here often enough that nearly all of the neighbors have generators. Natural gas costs a third to run the generator as compared to gasoline, so about half of our neighbors are using natural gas.
One thing that many people do not seem to realize about is that if you are using a standard generator, they run far more efficiently when they are nearly fully loaded. So if you buy a generator that is much larger than you really need it is going to use a lot more fuel in the long run. For us 5000 watts is about right. I use a lot of metering, our typical lighting and electronics load is only around 1000 watts, but the microwave, furnace, refrigerator, freezer, washer and natural gas dryer all have high start-up loads. So it is a compromise. Some of our neighbors have much larger generators, but I think that they are wasting a lot of money in additional fuel burn.