The Hamptons problem
A South Fork house is built for August and, most of the year, nobody is in it. The Town of East Hampton counted about 60% of its housing as seasonal or vacant at the 2020 Census; Southampton Town was 49% at the 2010 Census; Bridgehampton runs 56.8% by the 2020 count (the Town's own 2022 housing plan says even higher); Montauk is 59.8%; Water Mill is "greater than 60%" by the Town's 2022 housing plan. Those houses still have a panel, a well pump, a sump pump, a pool system and, increasingly, a generator and an EV charger — all drawing power whether or not anyone is there to notice if it stops.
Tropical Storm Isaias made the case in one storm. In August 2020, it knocked out power to roughly 645,000 Long Island customers, with full restoration taking up to eight days. A house with someone home rides that out. A house nobody is watching loses its well pump, its sump pump and any freeze alarm at exactly the moment they matter, which is the specific scenario a standby generator is built for — and why two real, currently operating East End electrical companies already sell generators, landscape and pool lighting, and (in one case) EV chargers as a standard bundle, not a hypothetical upsell.
Sizing a standby generator correctly
The temptation with a generator is to buy the biggest one available. Generac, the largest manufacturer and the only one whose sizing guidance we could read directly from the source, says the opposite: "bigger is not always better," and the right size follows peak electrical load, not square footage. Its own published guidance: a roughly 1,550-square-foot home typically needs 10–14 kilowatts (stepping up to 18 kilowatts if there's a heat pump or medical equipment on the circuit); an 18–22 kilowatt unit is "the sweet spot" for about 2,000 square feet; and 22 kilowatts is described as "the industry standard" for whole-home coverage in the 2,500–3,000-square-foot range. A Hamptons estate with a pool, a guest house and a wine cellar all on one service needs a real load calculation, not a guess from the square footage on the listing.
What a generator costs
Generac's own current retail pricing, read directly from the manufacturer: a 10 kilowatt unit lists at $3,769–4,619, 14 kW at $4,889–5,949, 18 kW at $5,709–6,769, 22 kW at $6,309–7,369, up to a 60 kW commercial-scale unit at $27,699. Those are unit-only prices. On top: a manual transfer switch runs $500–2,000 (automatic, $2,000–30,000), a concrete pad about $1,000 for 18 square feet (or $50–75 per square foot), a permit nationally $50–200, and annual maintenance $80–300.
The national "all-in installed" figures disagree with each other by a wide margin: one guide's dedicated generator page puts the average at $5,160 (range $1,516–8,810); a different page from the very same publisher says $1,540–8,740; a third guide says $5,505–10,245. Building our own estimate from parts that are individually sourced — Generac's 22 kW unit at $6,309–7,369, installation labor, a pad, and a permit — lands at roughly $8,900–13,900 all-in for that size, which is narrower than, but broadly consistent with, one unverified vendor's $8,000–16,000 estimate. We show the range rather than one number, because that is what the sources actually support, and because the honest answer to "what does a generator cost" is "it depends which one, and how big."
Generac's product line also includes Mobile Link, a remote-monitoring feature confirmed as real and current on the manufacturer's own site, though we could not independently verify its functionality or cost this session — worth asking about directly if remote alerts matter to you.
EV chargers and the PSEG Long Island rebate
A Level 2 home charger runs $554–1,380 installed nationally, averaging $967 — the unit itself $700–2,000 depending on the home's existing electrical capacity, labor $400–1,200, a permit $100–200. If the panel needs an upgrade first, add $800–2,000 for that plus $500–1,500 in associated rewiring, which is the single biggest reason two seemingly similar quotes can differ by thousands of dollars.
PSEG Long Island's own Residential EV Charger Rebate Program pays $100 off a qualifying Level 2 charger for any residential customer, or $400 total for a customer in a Disadvantaged Community or on the Household Assistance Program, provided the charger appears on the Electric Power Research Institute's vetted product list. The program's own page states no expiration date; a separate, unconfirmed secondary source claims a December 31, 2026 end date, which we note without treating as settled. Netting the base rebate against the average install cost puts a typical homeowner at roughly $867, or about $567 for a qualifying household.
Landscape, pool and outdoor lighting: the rest of the bundle
The two real local companies that sell generators and EV chargers also sell landscape and pool lighting, and the economics are similarly wide-ranging: low-voltage fixtures run $90–150 installed by one national guide, though other blended estimates run as high as $230–391 per fixture; a typical whole-property project averages around $3,000 ($2,000–4,000 typical); pool lighting specifically runs $300–500 per halogen fixture. A second home with nobody walking the grounds after dark benefits from lighting on a timer or a smart control the same way it benefits from a generator that starts itself — one more system that works whether or not anyone is there to flip a switch.
The permits — Southampton's fee schedule is a genuinely rare find
Most of what this guide cites is a national estimate, because nobody on the South Fork publishes a rate card. The Town of Southampton is the exception: its own Electrical Permit Fee Schedule, effective January 2, 2026, prices a generator at a flat $200, an EV charging station at $100 each, outdoor or landscape/pool lighting at $200, and a service upgrade at $200 (up to 200 amps), $300 (300 amps) or $400 (400-plus amps) — a clean $1 per amp across all three service tiers. The Town's application form requires the contractor's Suffolk County electrical license number and its expiration date, which is the clearest public evidence that Suffolk County licenses electrical contractors directly, even though the underlying licensing law's own text is not published anywhere we could reach. New York adopted the 2023 edition of the National Electrical Code statewide effective December 31, 2025, and Southampton's own schedule states plainly that it is enforced "at both the town and village levels." Other towns and villages on the fork permit the same work through different desks, at different (often unpublished) fees — the electrician we send you already knows which applies to your address.
What an empty house's old wiring does and does not tell you
An older, vacant house raises a natural question: does its wiring need attention before it's left alone all winter? Two wiring types draw real insurance scrutiny. Aluminum wiring, common in some homes built in the 1960s and 70s, was linked by a 2011 federal safety-commission finding to a 55-times-higher risk of reaching a fire-hazard connection than copper, and many standard insurers restrict or decline coverage without an inspection or repairs. Knob-and-tube wiring, older still, is treated more harshly — insurers commonly decline it outright or require a full rewire first.
What we will not do is turn a house's construction year into a wiring diagnosis. No source we found ties "built before 1950" to "still has knob-and-tube or aluminum wiring today" — plenty of older homes have been fully rewired across decades of ownership turnover and renovation, and plenty of newer additions only patched into whatever wiring was already there. We also could not find any source connecting panel amperage on its own to an insurance decision, so we do not make that claim either. An inspection, not a guess based on age, is the only way to know what's actually behind the wall — and it's the natural first step before adding a generator, an EV charger, or leaving a house empty for the winter.
What we do
Tell us what the house needs — a generator, an EV charger, outdoor lighting, a panel upgrade, or a general inspection before winter — and where it is. We put you in touch with one licensed, insured electrician who works your town, sizes the job to the house rather than to a rule of thumb, and handles the permit with whichever municipality applies. It's free for homeowners; the electrician quotes and does the work.
Sources and method
Seasonal-housing shares are cross-referenced from the catering and plumbing sheets' Census figures (2010 and 2020) and each town's own housing plan. The Isaias outage figures are PSEG Long Island's own reporting, cross-referenced from the HVAC and pool sheets. Generator sizing and unit pricing are Generac's own site, fetched directly (manufacturer primary, live retail pricing). Installed-cost ranges for generators, EV chargers and lighting are three to four national cost guides (HomeAdvisor, Fixr, and others), printed as disagreeing ranges rather than reconciled into one figure, exactly as they disagree in the source material. The PSEG Long Island EV rebate terms are the utility's own program page. The Southampton Town permit fees and licensing-field evidence come from two documents read in full: the Electrical Permit Fee Schedule (effective January 2, 2026) and the New Electrical Permit Application, both fetched directly from the Town's own site. The National Electrical Code adoption date is New York's own Department of State notice, corroborated by up.codes' code viewer. Aluminum and knob-and-tube wiring insurance treatment is Policygenius (aluminum, citing a 2011 U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission finding) and a blend of insurance-industry sources (knob-and-tube). The full sheet, with every source, confidence rating and named gap, is ops/research/electrician-facts-2026-09-02.md. Nothing here is a quote; the electrician you hire prices and permits the actual job.