The value of a generator became quickly apparent to every resident in Texas as the Arctic winds descended southward. Jessica Keller and her husband have been running Grasten Generators in Houston for 12 years, and business has been doing extremely well, building nicely, a lot of orders on the books for January. “In January we tripled our numbers from last January, and we were having a pretty great month. And then the storm hit.”
They had generators to live and work off of, she says, and used that ability to help everyone they could, whether they were clients or had bought their generators elsewhere.Keller says one of their greatest services was to answer their phones, which were ringing non-stop with desperate Houstonians. They had full staff making service calls as quickly as they could everywhere they could.
The phone hasn’t stopped ringing since. “Last month we received an entire 23 leads,” she explains, indicating that they pay for leads, and get a lot of client referrals in addition to paid advertising. “This month we’ve already received 1,712 leads.”
It’s not just Houston, and not just Texas. Historic wildfires tore through California, causing widespread and extended power outages. The 2019 Hurricane Season was historic. Winter has been brutal for many even before the Arctic Chill that swung south to Texas last week. Generator manufacturers have been seeing an impressive growth trend as demand increases, Keller saying they were having trouble finding enough product to fill orders in December.
Then came the storm, and now everyone wants a generator.
It’ll take months, she cautions. Many months before one can be installed. It looks now like maybe August at the soonest, and we will be well into hurricane season by then. If you have been prompted to consider installing a generator, she says, order one as soon as you can. The demand in the US is currently outstripping supply.
And when you have it installed, consider the cold. “A lot of people don’t think about their heater when they’re getting a generator for hurricane season,” Keller says. Some people had bought massive generators to provide power for their entire house, but had not hooked up their heater to the generator. Those homes had power for their refrigerators but no heat – something to think about.
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