Whole House Generator Cost Calculator
A standby generator costs about $12,056 installed for a 22 kW unit with a whole-house transfer switch, of which $7,150 is the machine. The number that decides whether that figure survives contact with your house is a different one: a 22 kW unit wants around 299 cubic feet of gas an hour, on top of the furnace, in January. Many domestic supplies were never sized for it.
Estimate the cost for your home
Estimated cost to install a standby generator
$12,174
typical · range $8,488 to $15,860 · 22 kW · $7,150 of it is the machine · 25.5 trade hours
Labour priced at national wages. Enter a ZIP code to price it for your area. 87% of this figure comes from modelled material prices — each line shows its own uncertainty.
Priced from bls.gov Aug 2026how every line is sourced
The one input that changes the answer for you.
Never runs out, which is the whole point: a generator that can run for a week unattended is a different proposition from one that needs refuelling every day. The catch is capacity — the supply has to deliver enough gas per hour, and in a cold snap the pressure in the street is at its lowest exactly when every appliance in the neighbourhood is running.
A service-rated transfer switch that carries everything, with a controller that sheds the big loads — air conditioning, the electric range, a car charger — when the generator cannot carry them all at once. More hardware, and it means nobody has to remember which sockets work.
A one-piece pad sized for the unit. Level, drains, and stays put. The middle option and the commonest.
| Transfer switch | Trade hours | Installed |
|---|---|---|
| Essential circuits only | 21.5 | $11,304 |
| Whole house, with load management | 25.5 | $12,174 |
1 / 5
The figure above is already calculated. Each step just makes it more yours, and you can stop at any of them.
The size you choose is a gas supply question, not a wattage question
Each size with what it asks of your gas supply at full load, beside what it costs.
| Size | Gas at full load | The machine | Installed |
|---|---|---|---|
| 14 kW | 190 cu ft/hr | $4,550 | $9,574 |
| 18 kW | 245 cu ft/hr | $5,850 | $10,874 |
| 22 kW | 299 cu ft/hr | $7,150 | $12,174 |
| 26 kW | 354 cu ft/hr | $8,450 | $13,474 |
That second column is the one to take to the conversation. A 22 kW unit wants around 299 cubic feet an hour of natural gas, on top of the furnace and the water heater, in January, when the pressure in the street is at its lowest because every appliance in the neighbourhood is running. Many domestic gas services were never sized for that. When they were not, the pipework from the meter has to be enlarged — and if the meter itself is too small, the utility replaces it on their schedule. ⚠️ That is the line people find after signing, and it is one phone call to the gas company to rule out before you get quotes rather than after.
Why this and not a portable at a tenth of the price
Because of one sentence. Ready.gov states that “Generators, camp stoves or charcoal grills should always be used outdoors and at least 20 feet away from windows”. A portable generator asks somebody to go out into the weather, start it, keep it twenty feet from every window, run cords back inside, and refuel it every few hours through the night. It works, it costs a fraction of the figure above, and every winter somebody does the one thing that must never be done and puts it in the garage. A standby unit is expensive precisely because it removes every one of those decisions: it lives outside permanently, starts itself, and runs on a pipe. ⚠️ If a portable is your answer, the piece that makes it safe to connect is an interlock kit at the panel — that is priced on our electrical panel page and it costs a few hundred dollars.
| Line item | Qty | Cost | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standby generator, weather enclosure and controllerrated kilowatts | 22kW | $5,060–$9,240 | estimated±29% |
| Service-rated transfer switch with load shedding1 on a whole-house installation | 1each | $900–$2,200 | estimated±42% |
| Natural gas pipe from the meterfeet of gas pipe, on natural gas | 20linear ft | $280–$680 | estimated±42% |
| Gas fitting, pressure test and purge6 hours | 6hour | $357–$384 | sourced |
| Feeder and conduit from generator to transfer switchfeet from generator to transfer switch | 30linear ft | $270–$780 | estimated±49% |
| Electrical installation and transfer switch wiring12 hours for essential circuits, 16 for a whole-house switch | 16hour | $944–$1,014 | sourced |
| Moulded composite pad1 on a composite pad | 1each | $180–$480 | estimated±45% |
| Cold weather kit, battery and first fill1 when a cold weather kit is fitted | 1each | $140–$380 | estimated±46% |
| Start-up, load test and exercise programming3.5 hours | 3.5hour | $206–$222 | sourced |
| Electrical and mechanical permits1 when the job is permitted | 1each | $150–$480 | estimated±52% |
| Total | $8,488–$15,860 | ±30% |
Where these numbers come from
- The column nobody publishes next to the price
- 14 kW wants 190 cubic feet an hour, 22 kW wants 299 and 26 kW wants 354 — at full load, on top of whatever the furnace and the water heater are already drawing, in a cold snap when pressure in the street is at its lowest because every appliance in the neighbourhood is running. That is the conversation to have before choosing a size, and it is almost never the conversation that happens. ⚠️ Our figure for the gas consumption is an estimate of model — approximately 13.6 cubic feet per hour per kilowatt — not a manufacturer specification. We publish it because it is the number that decides the answer and because leaving it out would make the price look more certain than it is. Ask your installer for the actual figure from the data plate.
- The line people find after signing
- When the existing supply cannot deliver that flow, the pipework from the meter has to be enlarged: $12,706 against $12,056 on this model. And beyond our side of it, if the meter itself is too small the utility replaces it — their equipment, their schedule, sometimes their charge, and excluded from every figure here because it varies too much to average. This is a five-minute phone call to the gas company before you collect quotes rather than after, and it is the single most valuable thing on this page. Propane changes the calculation rather than removing it: a higher energy density per cubic foot means a smaller pipe, and a tank that empties.
- Why a fixed machine instead of a portable at a tenth of the price
- Ready.gov, Power Outages states that “Generators, camp stoves or charcoal grills should always be used outdoors and at least 20 feet away from windows”. That is the whole argument. A portable asks somebody to go out in the weather, start it, keep it twenty feet from every window, run cords back inside and refuel it through the night — and every winter somebody does the one thing that must never be done and brings it under cover. CPSC, Carbon Monoxide Information Center covers what carbon monoxide means for a household. A standby unit is expensive precisely because it removes every one of those decisions. ⚠️ If a portable is your answer, the piece that makes it safe to connect is an interlock kit at the panel — a few hundred dollars, on our electrical panel page, and it exists to stop backfeeding the grid, which is what kills line workers. Both retrieved 2026-08-23.
- Everything, or the things that matter at three in the morning
- An essential-circuits transfer switch is $11,204 against $12,056 for a service-rated one carrying the whole house. The cheaper option also forces a useful conversation: heating, refrigeration, the well pump, the sump pump, some lights and the internet is a short list, and people mind the rest being dark far less than they expect to. The whole-house switch buys not having to remember which sockets work, and comes with a controller that sheds the air conditioning while the range is on — because a 22 kW machine cannot run everything a 200 amp service can.
- The two distances, which are not a detail
- Moving the machine from twenty feet of gas and thirty of cable to sixty and eighty takes this job from $12,056 to $13,891. Both runs follow the route the pipe and the cable actually take, and the gas one compounds: pipe diameter is decided by the flow needed and the distance travelled, so the same generator needs a fatter pipe further away. ⚠️ Where the machine is allowed to sit is not always your choice — many jurisdictions apply noise limits and setback distances from property lines to standby generators, and that can dictate both runs. Worth establishing before anyone quotes a location.
- What it costs after the invoice
- Not in any figure on this page and entirely real: a standby generator runs itself for a few minutes every week to stay serviceable, burning fuel each time, and needs an oil and filter service roughly annually or after any long outage. Over ten years that is meaningful money. The exercise schedule also has to be set by somebody at commissioning, which is why those three and a half hours are itemised — a machine that spends five years never running is a machine that will not start on the night it matters. In a cold climate the block heater and battery warmer are not accessories either, for the same reason.
- Labour rates by area, and what this page will not do
- BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, for electricians and for plumbers and pipefitters, adjusted to your metropolitan area. Retrieved 2026-08-20. Benefit load from BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation. This page does not name, compare or rank manufacturers, and it does not describe how any of the work is done. It prices the job, breaks it into lines you can check against a quote, and puts the gas demand next to the price so the conversation starts in the right place.
- Material prices
- Modelled estimates, not sourced prices. No public, machine-readable source of US residential material prices exists, and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise. Each line carries its own uncertainty band. How we estimate them.
Contractor overhead and profit applied at 33–43% over direct cost. Data last reviewed 2026-08-23.
What this figure does not include
- A larger gas meter or utility service
- If the meter itself cannot deliver the flow, the utility replaces it. That is their equipment, their schedule and sometimes their charge, and it varies too much to average. One phone call before getting quotes rather than after.
- A propane tank
- Buying or leasing a tank, and the slab or the burial it needs, is a separate job with its own economics. Leased tanks usually come with a fuel contract attached.
- Electrical panel upgrades
- Assumes the existing service and panel are sound and appropriately sized. Where they are not, that is a separate job on our electrical panel page.
- Fuel and maintenance
- A standby generator burns gas every week when it exercises and needs an oil and filter service roughly annually or after a long outage. Real money over a decade, and not in this figure.
- Portable generators
- A different product at a tenth of the price with an entirely different risk profile. If that is the comparison you are making, the interlock kit on our electrical panel page is the piece that makes a portable safe to connect.
- Battery storage
- Increasingly the alternative to a generator, silent, and priced completely differently. Not modelled here.
Questions people actually ask
How much is a generator for a 2000 square foot home?
About $12,056 in Atlanta for a 22 kW standby unit on natural gas with a whole-house transfer switch, ranging $8,374 to $15,738. A 14 kW unit feeding essential circuits is closer to $9,456. But floor area is the wrong input for this decision and we would rather say so: what sizes a generator is the load you want to run at once, not the size of the house. A 2,000 square foot house with gas heat and a gas water heater needs far less than the same house all-electric with a heat pump.
Is it worth it to install a whole house generator?
That depends on how often your power fails and what it costs you when it does — a well pump, a sump pump, a home business or medical equipment change the answer completely, and a few hours a year in a mild climate does not justify $12,056. What we can add is the cheaper comparison. A portable generator costs a fraction of this and requires somebody to go out into the weather, start it, keep it well away from the house and refuel it through the night. The piece that makes a portable safe to connect is an interlock kit at the panel, which is a few hundred dollars on our electrical panel page. Between those two sits the honest question: are you buying power, or are you buying not having to think about it.
Is a whole house generator a tax write-off?
We do not publish tax guidance and we are not tax advisers, so the honest answer is that we have no federal source establishing a general credit or deduction for a standby generator at a personal residence, and we are not going to invent one. Nothing on this page is netted against any incentive of any kind. There are narrow situations — documented medical necessity, or a portion attributable to a home business — where the treatment can differ, and those are questions for a tax professional with your circumstances in front of them rather than for a cost calculator. Some utilities and state programmes do offer their own incentives, which is a separate matter worth checking locally.
What are the disadvantages of a generac generator?
We do not compare or rate brands anywhere on this site, so this is about standby generators generally rather than any manufacturer. The real disadvantages are four. It is expensive: $12,056 here before anything goes wrong. It needs a gas supply that can actually feed it — a 22 kW unit wants around 299 cubic feet an hour, and many domestic services were never sized for that. It needs servicing: a weekly self-test that burns fuel and an oil change roughly annually, neither of which is in the figure above. And it is noisy at a distance that local ordinances sometimes regulate, which can decide where it is allowed to sit.
Taken from Google’s “people also ask” results for this search on 23 August 2026, not invented.
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