Gary we have a few very long heavy gauge extension cord we run off it. For the very reasons you mentioned above. I used to work an aquaculture farm on Bodega bay. We were hit with nasty storms constantly to the point of needing a kill switch between us and normal utility lines, so that when we fired up the huge diesel generator, we wouldn't fry anyone working on fixing the downed lines! A friend up North is using a natural gas setup to which you refer to. He has major outages regularly. Here it's the once in ten year storms, so a small portable does the trick, not to mention is affordable to use.