AEP called ahead of time to warm us the power would be going out at 9 a.m. Tuesday because they were installing a new transformer in the area. We weren’t worried. This would be the first real-world test of our Guardian automatic backup generator.

Sure enough, the power went dead two minutes after 9 a.m. Exactly 20 seconds later, the generator fired up and the lights came back on 10 seconds after that. Full power restored in 30 seconds. When AEP restored power at 11:31 a.m., the system automatically switched the power back over to the utility and the generator went into cool-down mode and shut down. According to the guage on our propane tank, it used less than 5 percent of fuel.

I love it when something works like it’s supposed to.