Most projects on the resale list get their value from the people who walk through the house. A standby generator gets most of its value from the people who run the power lines.
That is our reading when the resale survey is set next to the federal government's outage tables. Nationally, real estate professionals estimate that a $13,534 standby generator adds $12,902 to a sale price, 95.3% of its cost, according to the Remodeling 2025 Cost vs. Value Report (www.costvsvalue.com). That is more than the same report's midrange bath remodel (80%), vinyl window replacement (75.5%) or asphalt roof (67.5%) are estimated to recover, and more than three times its solar installation (29.7%). In the West South Central region (Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana) the generator is estimated to recover 104.3%, more than it cost. In the East North Central region, which includes Michigan, 90.5%.
The spread between those two regions is the story. Buyers pay for a generator in proportion to how often they have sat in the dark.
What the report actually measured
Two things need to be clear before the numbers mean anything.
First, the project. The report's generator is not a whole-house system. It is a 70-amp backup supplying two 240-volt circuits and six 120-volt circuits, on a concrete or composite pad, with an automatic transfer switch, a load center, an exterior disconnect, grounding, about 30 feet of conduit and cable, and a short flexible line tied into an existing propane supply. Furnace, refrigerator, well pump, a few lights. A unit sized to run the whole house, air conditioning included, costs more, and the report does not measure it.
Second, the resale value. It is not a sale price. The report's publisher asked more than 6,000 Realtors, in a survey run with the National Association of Realtors' RPR platform, what value each of 28 projects adds to the sale price of a home in their market. The 95.3% is what the agents who sell the houses believe buyers will pay. The job cost comes from Verisk's building-cost data, indexed to Bureau of Labor Statistics and Bureau of Economic Analysis prices.
So the claim is narrow and worth stating exactly: in 2025, the professionals who price homes for a living believed a $13,534 partial-house generator would come back almost whole at closing.
Where it sits on the list
Against the other 27 projects, the generator ranks seventh nationally. Every project above it is exterior work or a minor kitchen refresh, the pattern covered in The 2025 Renovation ROI Rankings. Below it sit the projects most people think of as renovations: the bath, the windows, the roof, the basement and every addition. In the West South Central region it also ranks seventh of 28, and there it is one of the projects estimated to return more than it costs.
The comparison that matters most is the other way to keep the lights on. Solar costs $55,937 in the report's specification and is estimated to recover $16,625, which is 29.7%; we took it apart in Basement, ADU, Solar. The generator costs a quarter as much and recovers three times the share. The two projects answer different questions, and solar's case is a utility-bill case rather than a resale case. But a homeowner who wants resilience and has one budget should know which of the two the market pays for.
The reason: the outage tables
The U.S. Energy Information Administration publishes how many minutes the average customer in each state spent without power. The table has two versions: one that counts major events like hurricanes and ice storms, and one that strips them out and shows ordinary reliability.
Chart: average hours without power per customer in 2024, major event days included (the System Average Interruption Duration Index), for the five hardest-hit states, Louisiana, Ohio, Arkansas, Michigan and the U.S. average. Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Electric Power Annual 2024, Table 11.3, retrieved October 2026.
In 2024 the average U.S. customer lost 611 minutes, about 10 hours, with major events included; EIA's customer-weighted summary of the same year rounds it to 11. EIA describes 2024 as the year with the most hours without power in a decade, nearly twice the average of the ten years before, with major events responsible for 80% of the total. Texas customers lost 1,271 minutes, about 21 hours, the fourth-worst figure in the country behind South Carolina, North Carolina and Florida; EIA notes that Hurricane Beryl alone left 2.6 million Texas customers without power. Michigan's bad year was 2023, when a February ice storm left more than 700,000 customers without power and the state's average reached 1,094 minutes, about 18 hours.
Chart: average minutes without power per customer in 2024, major event days excluded, for the states in the East North Central and West South Central census divisions and the U.S. average. Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Electric Power Annual 2024, Table 11.3, retrieved October 2026.
Strip the storms out and a different pattern shows up. On ordinary reliability Michigan is the worst of the five states in its region: 160 minutes a year, against 133 for Ohio, 121 for Indiana, 91 for Wisconsin and 59 for Illinois, and against 129 for Texas and 126 for the country. A Michigan buyer does not need a hurricane to have an opinion about a generator. They have the opinion from the Tuesday nights.
Read the two tables next to the two regional resale numbers. The region that took the 21-hour year, and whose Louisiana and Arkansas customers lose more ordinary minutes than anyone else on the chart, values the generator above its cost. Michigan's region values it at 90.5%, and the regional figure is an average across five states, two of which (Wisconsin and Illinois) have some of the most reliable everyday service in the chart. That is our reading of the two datasets side by side, not a finding either publisher states. The regional averages describe other people's houses. They point at where to look, which is your own utility's outage record.
Why the market is still early
Generac, the Wisconsin generator maker, told its shareholders in its annual report for 2025 that home standby penetration is approximately 6.75% of the addressable market, which it defines as single-family detached, owner-occupied homes worth more than $175,000. More than nine of every ten eligible houses do not have one. The same filing lists "more frequent, severe, and volatile weather impacting an aging grid" among the trends it is counting on.
Two things follow for a homeowner. The feature is still rare enough to stand out in a listing, which is part of why agents price it near cost. And the demand is being written by the weather, which is not a trend a seller controls, only one they can be on the right side of.
What this means for your property
If you are selling in the next two years and your area had a bad outage year, the generator is one of the few mechanical projects that the resale survey estimates comes back nearly whole, and the one project on the list whose value the next storm advertises for you. Put the permit, the transfer-switch paperwork and the service record in the disclosure packet; a buyer pays for a generator they can see works.
If you are staying, the resale number is the floor on the decision, not the reason for it. A partial-house system that keeps the furnace, the sump pump and the refrigerator running through 18 hours is bought for the 18 hours. By the report's estimate you get about 95 cents of every dollar back when you sell, which makes it cheaper to own than the bath remodel that gets 80.
If you own rentals, the report measured the owner-occupied case, not the tenant case, so there is no resale number to lean on. What exists is the operating case: a tenant who loses a refrigerator of food and two nights of heat is a tenant who starts reading other listings. Everyday reliability, the second chart, is the table to check for the unit's county.
Sequence it right. The generator does not move the first-impression projects off the top of the list. The exterior projects in The 2025 Renovation ROI Rankings are estimated to recover two to three times their cost in every region. If the budget covers one project, the data has not changed since July. If it covers two, the generator is the one that pays you back in both the sale and the storm.
The rule
Price a generator the way the market does: by your utility's outage record, not by the brochure. In a region with hurricane years it is the rare mechanical project estimated to sell for more than it cost. In a region with chronic everyday outages it is a near-break-even project that you also get to use. In a region with neither, it is a comfort purchase, and even that one is estimated to get most of its money back.
What a roof, new windows and siding are estimated to return is in Windows, Roof, Siding. The solar figure is taken apart in Basement, ADU, Solar, and the full exterior-first pattern is in The 2025 Renovation ROI Rankings.