Outages here are not evenly distributed. The dense city grid tends to come back reasonably quickly; the long feeders running through wooded, hilly terrain can stay down for days. The Electric Guys install standby generators and transfer switches across Pittsburgh and about thirty-three miles around, sized against the circuits you actually need rather than the square footage of the house.
A standby generator is a permanent installation: a unit outside on a pad, a fuel supply, and an automatic transfer switch at the service that isolates the house from the grid and starts the generator when the power drops. It is a different thing entirely from a portable unit and an extension lead, and the transfer switch is the part that makes it both safe and legal.
Why choose The Electric Guys
- Sized against your circuits, not a brochure. Heat, fridge, freezer, sump pump, well pump, some lighting and the internet is a very different specification from whole-house with air conditioning. Both are legitimate; they cost very different amounts.
- The transfer switch is not optional. Backfeeding a house through a dryer outlet energises the street and can kill a lineworker. We install a proper automatic transfer switch, permitted and inspected.
- Fuel supply coordinated. Natural gas or propane changes the pad, the run and the sizing, and the gas side has to be right before the electrical side matters.
- Straight about running costs. These units exercise themselves weekly and need servicing. That is part of owning one and you should hear it before you buy.
Our standby generator process
- Work out what must stay on. Room by room, circuit by circuit. This is the conversation that determines everything else.
- Size the unit and the switch. Against those circuits, the starting loads, and the fuel available.
- Site the pad. Clearances from windows, doors and the property line, drainage, noise relative to your house and the neighbours', and a route back to the service.
- Install. Pad, unit, transfer switch at the service, and the fuel connection coordinated with the gas work.
- Permit, inspect, commission. Tested under real load, with you present, so you have seen it change over before you need it to.
Why this is a regional demand, not a luxury
Three things about greater Pittsburgh combine to produce long outages. The terrain is hills and river valleys, which makes for winding distribution routes. The tree cover is heavy and mature, and a great deal of it stands directly over overhead lines — including nearly all of the older city streets and most of the townships. And the weather does two things well: summer thunderstorms that bring limbs down fast, and wet, heavy snow that loads them until they go.
The pattern that follows is consistent. Dense, well-crewed city circuits are restored first. Long feeders serving spread-out housing through wooded terrain are restored last — which in our radius means the wooded parts of Penn Hills, the larger lots out in Murrysville, the edges of Butler County, and the hillside streets where access is genuinely difficult.
There is a second reason it matters here, and it is the one people underestimate. A great many homes in this region depend on a sump pump, and basements here take water. An outage during the storm that is filling your basement is precisely when the pump stops. Out past the built-up areas, where wells are common, the same outage stops the water supply altogether.
Serving Pittsburgh, PA and nearby
Across the city and out through Mt. Lebanon, Bethel Park, Monroeville, Penn Hills, Murrysville, Robinson, Moon Township, McCandless and Cranberry.
Free estimates Monday through Saturday. Call or text (412) 501-7391 and tell us what went off last time and for how long.