Standby vs. Portable Generators: Which Is Right for Your Shreveport Home?

If you lived through the last few hurricane seasons in Shreveport-Bossier, you already know: SWEPCO and AEP do a solid job, but ice storms, tornadoes, and Gulf hurricanes still knock power out for days at a time. The question most homeowners ask us after the lights come back on is the same one: should I buy a portable generator, or spend the money on a whole-home standby?

Here's an honest, side-by-side comparison based on what we install and service every week in North Louisiana.

The short version

• Portable generator ($800–$2,500): good for keeping a fridge, a few lights, and a window unit running. Requires manual setup, gasoline on hand, and an interlock or transfer switch to be legal and safe.
• Standby generator ($9,000–$18,000 installed): starts automatically within seconds of an outage, runs the whole house on natural gas or propane, and needs zero attention during the storm.

Cost breakdown for Shreveport homes

Portable

A 7,500–9,500 watt inverter portable costs $1,200–$2,500 at the local big-box stores. To use it safely and legally with your home's wiring, you need one of two things installed by a licensed electrician:

• Interlock kit ($400–$700 installed): a mechanical slide on your panel that prevents the generator breaker and main breaker from being on at the same time. Cheapest legal option.
• Manual transfer switch ($900–$1,600 installed): a small sub-panel with 6–10 pre-selected circuits. Cleaner and easier for most homeowners to operate in the dark.

Total portable setup for a Shreveport home: $1,600–$4,100 all-in.

Standby

A whole-home standby sized for a typical 1,800–2,500 sqft Shreveport house is a 20–24kW unit. Installed with an automatic transfer switch, gas line work, concrete pad, and SWEPCO coordination, we're generally at $11,500–$16,500. Larger homes with electric heat, dual HVAC systems, or pools push toward $18,000.

Reliability during Shreveport storm events

This is where standby wins by a wide margin. During the February 2021 ice storm and every hurricane remnant since, we've had two consistent service call patterns:

• Portable owners: can't find gas, ran the generator dry overnight, back-fed the panel without an interlock and tripped SWEPCO's recloser, or the generator won't start because it hasn't been run in eight months.
• Standby owners: "I didn't even notice the power was out until my neighbor asked to charge his phone."

Standby units self-test weekly, run on natural gas (which almost never goes down in Shreveport-Bossier — the gas mains are underground), and transfer in about 10 seconds. There is no gas can, no extension cord, no decision-making in the middle of a storm.

Maintenance reality

Portable

Oil change every 50–100 run hours. Non-ethanol fuel or fuel stabilizer if it sits. Run it under load for 20 minutes every 90 days or the carburetor gums up — this is the number one reason portables won't start when you need them. Louisiana humidity is not kind to small engines that sit outside.

Standby

Annual service (oil, filter, spark plugs, battery check) runs $250–$400. The unit runs a 12-minute self-test every week whether you're home or not. If the battery is weak or an oil pressure sensor fails, the control board tells you months before the next storm.

Automatic transfer switches and older Shreveport homes

A lot of the homes we service in Highland, South Highlands, Broadmoor, and the older parts of Bossier City have panels from the 1970s and 80s. Two things matter here:

• The panel usually has to be upgraded first. Standby generators require a service-rated automatic transfer switch, which means either a new 200A panel or a service-entrance-rated ATS ahead of the existing panel. On a Federal Pacific or Zinsco panel, upgrading is not optional — those panels can't be extended safely.
• Gas line sizing is often the surprise cost. A 22kW generator needs roughly 300 cubic feet of natural gas per hour under load. Many older Shreveport homes have 1/2" or 3/4" gas runs that were sized for a water heater and a stove — not a generator. We coordinate with a licensed plumber to upsize the run when needed.

SWEPCO and AEP coordination

Any generator that connects to your home's wiring — portable with an interlock, portable with a transfer switch, or a standby — has to be installed so it cannot back-feed the utility grid. This protects line workers restoring power after a storm. SWEPCO and AEP both require a licensed electrician's permit and inspection for standby installs, and Ed's Electric handles the paperwork as part of every job.

Which one should you buy?

Straight answer, based on how you live:

• Buy a portable if you only need to keep a fridge, a few lights, and maybe a window AC running for 24–48 hours, and you're comfortable pulling the generator out, fueling it, and starting it in the rain.
• Buy a standby if you have anyone in the house with medical equipment, a well pump, a home office you can't lose, central HVAC you want to keep running in July, or you simply don't want to think about outages anymore.

Get a real quote

Ed's Electric installs both. We'll walk your house, check the panel, measure the gas run, size the generator to what you actually use (not what a salesman wants to sell you), and give you a fixed-price written quote. Call 318-688-2788 or request an estimate online. We serve Shreveport, Bossier City, Haughton, Benton, Keithville, and Greenwood.