51% of US consumers are interested in acquiring backup generation for their primary residence in the next two years, and almost the same fraction (47%) express interest in baseload generation (i.e., on-site generation equipment to provide all of the power for the home on a regular basis), Energy Insights reports. US households purchased a record 1.7 mln backup generators from April 2005 through March 2006 for their primary residences. When asked to identify the top three reasons for interest in acquiring baseload generation equipment, survey respondents cite “worries about outages or blackouts” (72%) as number one. “Saving money on energy bills” (67%) and “independence from electric utility” (40%) rank second and third respectively. Despite consumers’ outage anxiety, findings reveal only 7% of US households currently have an on-site generator, most of which are portable models that are exclusively used during power outages and need to be manually started.