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I did things a little differently.

In order to support my electric heat or AC, I would have needed a huge genset that was way out of my budget. Other than those items, my most important support requirements were my well pump, refrigerator, freezer, a few lights, and the fans that force air around my fireplace insert stove (about $4,000) and into the room to deliver a lot more heat than just convection would. The stove alone kept my house in the low to mid 60's during the coldest times this week as long as the fans were running.

I bought a 12KW Champion gasoline fired generator (about $2,000). I keep at least 20 gallons of fuel stabilized gas around at all times for my other power equipment, and I have about another 30 gallons in my vehicle fuel tanks that I keep at least 3/4 full. This will support all my critical items and lots more as well. I fill more gas cans if I think a situation is coming, and if it doesn't materialize I just put the gas into my cars.

I looked at transfer switches and auxiliary panels but was put off by the cost and by the fact that I already had a perfectly good panel full of perfectly good breakers. I figured there had to be a better way. There is - I discovered generator interlocks. I had one of those installed in my panel and an external 50 amp receptacle installed on the wall of my garage behind my panel. Cost: around $600 including a custom 30 ft. cable to let me keep the generator exhaust away from the house.

When power goes out I turn off all the breakers including the main, fuel up the generator, plug in the heavy single cable between the generator and the house, fire up the generator,turn on the generator breaker, and manage the load by selectively turning the breakers for high wattage items like the well pump on and off as I need them. My generator has a set of LED lights that tell me how much of the available load I'm using so I can easily avoid overloading it. This setpu can even support a window air conditioner for the bedroom to stay comfortable in summer. All for around $7,000 (generator, stove, cable, gen interlock, and external receptacle). This works for me.

For a smaller budget setup, Home Depot in Weatherford is selling Champion 6KW units for $799 this weekend. They're big enough to run a lot of things turned on and off selectively if you don't mind playing with a lot of extension cords.