When you purchase a backup home generator, you put stock in it to provide power when you, your family, and even your pets need it the most. After all, a backup home generator can do a lot more than keeping a few essential appliances up and running. From ensuring those with special medical needs have access to refrigerated medicine to upholding your home security system while your family is asleep or out of the house, it’s a resource to safeguard what you and yours need to survive and live life uninterrupted.

Picture this: you’re spending a stormy night inside the home with your family, confident you won’t lose power or the function of your most-used appliances because you have a backup generator. However, before long, the power cuts — and you’re left in the dark, wondering what could have gone wrong with your backup power source. A possible and common reason? Your backup generator wasn’t properly sized for your home.

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Days after Hurricane Harvey carved its destructive path along the Texas coast, CNN reported that one “Battered Texas town may be without power for weeks.”

Within hours of Hurricane Irma passing to the north of Puerto Rico, NBC reported that more than 1 million people are left without power on the island and some could be without it for months. As thousands of residents begin to make emergency evacuations or preparation plans in anticipation of Hurricane Irma potentially hitting Florida, we can’t help but think about the shortage in supplies and high demand this week.

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24 Hour Hotline (844) 376-9374

According to Google Trends, online searches for home generators increased by 4X from the time Hurricane Harvey made landfall until the arrival of Hurricane Irma.

“The historic storms during the 2017 hurricane season have reminded homeowners why they need to plan. Waiting until the power is out isn’t a sound plan,” says Michael Petrakis, president of Colonial Generators. “We believe every homeowner should have the ability to protect his or her home, property and family. This is why Colonial Generators has simplified storm readiness for homeowners.”

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We aren’t ready for the lights to go out

This is a great article published in USAToday by Glenn Reynolds

Could it be lights out for America? That’s something that people are starting to worry about, and these worries aren’t coming solely from the usual crowd of survivalists and preppers. Shut down the computers that run the power plants and distribution systems and you shut down America. That’s looking more possible, lately.

One of those worrying is former ABC News anchor Ted Koppel, whose new book, Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath, looks at the danger of losing electrical power due to a cyberattack. The picture Koppel paints isn’t a pretty one: Cities, unpowered for weeks and months, could become largely uninhabitable.

But, says Koppel, nobody is thinking about this very clearly: “It would be comforting to report that those agencies charged with responding to disaster are adequately prepared to deal with the consequences of a cyberattack on the grid. They are not.”

In fact, he writes, they can’t even agree on what’s involved: “The deputy administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) believes that a major urban center would have to be evacuated. His boss, the administrator, does not. The administrator believes that a successful cyberattack on a power grid is possible, even likely. His deputy does not. The current secretary of homeland security is sure that a plan to deal with the aftermath of a cyberattack on the grid exists, but he doesn’t know any details of the plan. As of this writing, there is no specific plan.”

Well, that’s comforting, though not especially surprising: If the government flubs its response to natural disasters like Katrina or Sandy, when storms are a regular occurrence, how likely is it to deal well with something that hasn’t happened to the United States before?

Nor is a cyber-attack on the power grid just a fantasy. In fact, in Ukraine (which I fear is a laboratory for new warfare techniques the way Spain was in the 1930s), it’s already happened.

But will we take it as one? We should. Though the American power grid is reliable and well-designed, it wasn’t constructed with cyberattacks in mind.

We could protect against cyberattacks completely, of course, by simply taking computers out of the grid and controlling things manually. This is undoubtedly possible since we ran electrical networks before computers existed, but it would be costly and inefficient. And while that approach would protect against cyber attacks, it wouldn’t do much to insulate the grid from other threats, like electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attacks and solar flares that are also causes of concern.

Apparently, the White House is finally beginning to address the problem, but we’re years behind the curve. At the very least, we should have backup plans for restoring power if things go wrong. And beyond that, we should be designing networks that are more resistant to cyber sabotage. Because the world is unlikely to become a safer place anytime soon.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor, is the author of The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself, and a member of USA TODAY’s Board of Contributors.

Colonial Generators – Customized Installation Trucks

This is a sneak peak at our customized mercedes installation trucks. The special trucks include a heavy duty hydraulic lift to allow us to quickly transport your generator from our warehouse to your home or office.  These trucks are capable of carrying up to 30kW sized generators so we can easily transport, deliver and install in one day.

Colonial Generators is the number 1 standby generator dealer of Cummins, Generac, Briggs & Stratton, and Kohler Generators.  We make the decision to purchase a generator easy – 0% financing, $0 down, and monthly payments starting at $125 or Buy it Now for $8999 installed.  No hidden fees or extras.  (844) 376-9374 for a free quote.