Whole-Home Generator Installation

Neighbors Electric is based just south of Arlington in Crowley, and we install whole-home standby generators for homeowners across Arlington, TX — Tarrant County’s second-largest city, stretching across ZIP codes 76001 through 76018. Arlington’s grid takes a real hit whenever North Texas gets hard weather, and after Winter Storm Uri in February 2021 rolling blackouts left a huge share of DFW without power for days in freezing temperatures. A lot of Arlington homeowners decided after that week that they weren’t going through it again without a backup plan.

A standby generator is different from the portable unit you wheel out of the garage during a storm. It’s a permanent piece of equipment, wired into your home’s electrical system, that starts on its own within seconds of an outage and keeps running until utility power comes back. For a city as spread out and varied as Arlington — older neighborhoods near downtown, newer subdivisions further south and east, everything in between — getting the installation right means starting with the house, not the catalog.

What a Whole-Home Standby Install Actually Involves

The first step is sizing. We calculate the home’s actual electrical load — HVAC, well pump if applicable, kitchen circuits, the works — and size the generator in kW to match it, rather than guessing or upselling a bigger unit than the house needs. Undersized and the generator trips under load; oversized and the homeowner pays for capacity they’ll never use.

• Automatic transfer switch (ATS): This is the component that senses a utility outage, disconnects the home from the grid, and switches it over to generator power automatically — no one has to be home to flip anything.
• Pad and placement: The unit sits on a concrete or composite pad, set back from windows and property lines per code and manufacturer clearance requirements.
• Fuel hookup: Most standby generators run on natural gas or propane. We coordinate the gas line sizing and connection with a licensed gas contractor so the unit gets the fuel pressure it needs under full load.
• Permit and inspection: Arlington requires an electrical permit for the transfer switch and circuit work, plus a gas permit for the fuel line. Both get inspected before the system goes live. We pull the permits and schedule the inspections as part of the job — it’s not an add-on.

Sizing for Arlington’s Range of Homes

Arlington isn’t one kind of house. We work on smaller single-story homes where the goal is keeping the essentials running — refrigerator, a few lights, the HVAC’s blower — and we work on larger homes where the homeowner wants the whole panel covered, including both AC units and the kitchen. Both are legitimate goals, and both start with the same load calculation. We’ll walk the panel with you, ask what actually matters if the power’s out for three days in July or a February freeze, and size the equipment and the transfer switch to match, whole-house coverage or a defined set of essential circuits, your call.

Why the License and the Inspection Matter

Neighbors Electric holds Texas Electrical Contractor License #41555. That’s not a formality for a generator install; the transfer switch has to be wired so it physically cannot backfeed the utility grid, which is a real safety issue for line workers restoring power after an outage. An improperly wired system can also void the generator’s warranty and fail inspection outright, which means redoing work and delaying the day you actually need the thing. We wire it to code, we pull the permit, and we’re there for the inspection.

Related work we also handle in the same visit for a lot of Arlington customers: if your generator ever needs service down the line, see our generator repair page, and if your panel is older or undersized for a new generator load, check electrical panel upgrades.

Flat-Rate Quote, No Surprises

We quote the job as a flat rate after the load calculation and site visit, sizing, transfer switch, pad, electrical hookup, and permit coordination included, spelled out before we start. No hourly guesswork, no change orders halfway through. For the full picture on how we approach standby generator installs across the Fort Worth area, see our whole-home generator installation page. To see everything we handle for Arlington homeowners day to day, visit our Arlington electrician page.

Call (817) 533-0943 or request a quote online and we’ll get a load calculation scheduled.