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In a place where the seasons of the year are used interchangeably as nouns and verbs, prosperity has a new measurement.
And it's not whether one winters in Aspen or Vail.
Or even the number of fireplaces in one's not-so-humble abode.
It's kilowatts, kW for short, two letters that are now part of the vocabulary of a growing number of Greenwich homeowners who have invested in emergency generators in the wake of extended power outages during Tropical Storm Irene and a freak October snowstorm.
Eroding public confidence in the power grid is fueling a new arms race, a boon for electrical contractors that has taxed the supply chain of generators and swamped many installers.
At a 7,000-square-foot home in the backcountry, John Portanova, a well-known general contractor in town, said he recently installed a pair of 30-kilowatt generators to power 11 central air conditioning units.
"He even had an air conditioner just for his wine cooler and for his cigar cooler," Portanova said of the unidentified owner. "He didn't want to lose anything."
Cannondale Generators, a major supplier for the area based in Wilton, sold a 500-kilowatt generator to a local contractor in Greenwich, according to Paul Bonomo Jr., the company owner.
The price tag? A cool, for lack of a better word, $250,000.
"This is like a 35,000-square-foot home," Bonomo said.
There are two main types of generators, the portable kind that run on gasoline and automatic standby models that run on either propane or natural gas. The latter command substantially larger investments of money and take about 60 seconds to kick in when there's a power outage.
Some homeowners demand instant gratification, however.
Bonomo revealed that the same contractor that bought the 500-kilowatt generator from his company was planning to install a second unit to bridge the time gap.
"That's an exception," Bonomo said. "Most people are OK with the power being out for 60 seconds until their generator kicks on."
This is the first year that Greenwich started tracking the number of permits for new generators separately from run-of-the-mill electrical trade permits.
Through Dec. 22, the town issued 457 generator permits, according to Jodi Couture, its zoning enforcement officer.
A majority of them came after Tropical Storm Irene struck the weekend before Labor Day, with 39 issued in September, 69 in October, 104 in November and 79 so far this month.
"After the snowstorm, we saw a larger-than-normal amount," said Bill Marr, the town's building official.
The general rule of thumb is that permits are required any time the electrical wiring of a home or business is altered, according to town officials, who said plans are subject to review of zoning enforcement, building inspectors and the health department.
Heavier units require a concrete base and town regulations prohibit the placement of generators above septic fields.
Homeowners who use portable generators with extension cords plugged into them do not need a permit.
"We don't like to talk about extension cords because they're not a good thing," Marr said.
Former Selectman Peter Crumbine had his ducks in a row for the Oct. 29 snowstorm, having purchased a generator in 2010 after that year's March nor'easter paralyzed Greenwich.
"It kept getting colder and colder in the house," said Crumbine, who lives in the midcountry off North Street.
In a bind, Crumbine turned to Portanova after the first contractor who installed his generator, whom he did not name, failed to connect it to the heat.
"You have to be careful," Crumbine said. "It's important that it be a good, reputable installer."
Crumbine shelled out about $9,000 for a 17-kilowatt generator to power his lights, heat, refrigerator, television, computer and other appliances.
"Finally, I said, `Enough is enough,' " Crumbine said. "Drive around Greenwich now during power outages, you hear a lot of noise, a lot of generators humming."
The night before Tropical Storm Irene made landfall in Greenwich at the end of August, Scot Weicker ponied up $1,700 for a 3,000-watt Honda portable generator. He has no regrets.
"It was the best purchase of my life," said Weicker, a Riverside resident who is the son of former Gov. and former U.S. Sen. Lowell Weicker Jr.
Weicker works out of a home office in his basement. The mere thought of losing his sump pump during the storm convinced him to buy a generator.
"I just didn't want my basement to flood, which would be disastrous to me," Weicker said.
There is a virtue to having a portable unit for Weicker, who did not lose power during the October snowstorm.
"My in-laws lost their power on Sumner Road," Weicker said. "It powered their two refrigerators and other appliances. They were out of power for six days. I was able to help my in-laws, which is always a good thing for a son-in-law."
Peter Stern, who lives in the King-Merritt subdivision in northwest Greenwich, bought a 20-kilowatt generator earlier this year that he needed during Tropical Storm Irene.
"The investment is worth the peace of mind," Stern said. "You can live comfortably for a week."
Before he had a standby generator, Stern had a portable unit.
"The portable unit means you've got to watch it, you've got to turn it on, you've got to hook it up," said Stern, who has lived in Greenwich since 1993.
Stern's standby generator runs on propane and is enough to power the heat, refrigerator, lights and a sump pump. Though it is capable of running the air conditioner, he opted not to connect the generator at this time.
"It's enough to run everything we want," Stern said.
State Rep. Livvy Floren, R-149th District, who lives in Sabine Farm off Round Hill Road in the midcountry, is a more recent convert to the generator club.
The Republican incumbent is having an 85-kilowatt generator installed in January, the culmination of a three-month and "expensive" installation process that involved trench work on her property to connect nearby natural gas lines to the back-order unit.
In her sixth term representing western, midcountry and backcountry Greenwich, as well as North Stamford, Floren acknowledged that seeing the lights on the vast majority of her neighbors' generator-powered homes during outages was the tipping point.
"It got to be so depressing," Floren said. "I had heat, hot water envy."
Floren has a generator at her vacation home in Colorado that she said has never been used.
Luckily, she didn't lose power during the last major storm in October in Greenwich.
"It was like the electricity gods were watching," Floren said.
Daniel Warzoha, the town's emergency management director and a former fire chief, urged homeowners to exercise extreme caution when it comes to generators and not cut corners.
"Proper installation is key," Warzoha said.
The first major no-no is running a generator inside the garage or house, said Warzoha, who warned that homeowners run the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning without adequate ventilation.
Another egregious move is using washer and dryer electrical outlets to connect a generator in what is known as "back-feeding."
"It's illegal. You run the chance of you have exposed energized blades. If you touch it with your hand, you get blasted," said Tom Anderson, owner of Anderson Electric in Pemberwick.
A former volunteer fire chief in Cos Cob for 14 years, Anderson knows all too well the hazards of back-feeding, which he said could also be fatal to utility workers in a neighborhood repairing downed lines that are not believed to be energized.
Anderson characterized the current generator craze as a free-for-all.
"I've heard of some people who will come over in the middle of the night and plug their extension cord in," Anderson said of neighbors stealing power.
Anderson estimated that he's gained dozens of new customers thanks to nature's wrath this year and the inability of Connecticut Light & Power Co. to restore power promptly in many cases.
"You can't get generators right now," Anderson said. "They're six, eight weeks out."
The cost of an automatic standby generator is based on the size of the house and the expectations of the homeowner.
"We have some of these big houses in the backcountry, they don't even want to know that there's an outage," Anderson said.
Generator prices range from $1,500 for a portable unit to $200,000 for a top-end standby unit, according to Anderson, who will usually size up a customer's home and appliances before they buy.
In addition to the generator itself, homeowners will need to pay an electrician to do the installation and pay for a propane tank if they do not have a natural gas connection on their property.
"A lot of people are content having a portable unit where they can run a few key things," said Trey Kelsey, owner of Greenwich Hardware & Home, another major supplier of generators. "In many cases, a portable only creates a spider web of extension cords."
Kelsey estimated that he has sold 1,000 generators this year alone.
"So the bottom line is mother nature is a real driver of our business," Kelsey said.
Since Tropical Storm Irene, Cannondale Generators in Wilton estimates it has sold 900 generators, including 400 portable models.
"I had 200 people here lined up looking for portable generators," said Bonomo, whose family owns the company.
To be able to run the "essentials" of an average home, Bonomo said a standby unit plus installation runs between $6,000 to $10,000. A bigger "Greenwich home" installation costs $15,000 to $25,000.
Bonomo also advises his customers to get a service contract for their generators, which he compared to a car.
"It's like an engine," Bonomo said.
While the record demand is a boon for generator suppliers and electrical contractors, they acknowledged that there are newfound logistical challenges.
"It just absolutely put us to max capacity," Bonomo said. "We've all been putting in 60-hour work weeks."
In addition to five family members who own the business, Bonomo said he employs 16 generator mechanics and two to three delivery people. He is adding people to meet the demand.
"The biggest problem in this area is finding competent mechanics," Bonomo said.
The generator industry is not alone in having to adapt to the onslaught.
"I've never seen so many applications. People don't want to be in the dark and I don't blame them," said Caroline Calderone Baisley, the town's health director.
Baisley's office is charged with enforcing Greenwich's noise ordinance, which restricts daytime sound from generators and other motorized equipment to 55 decibels, which is slightly louder than using a typewriter.
While there is an exemption for generator noise during emergencies such as power outages, the ordinance is in full force at all other times, including during testing of the units, which contractors and town officials agreed poses a problem.
The town's initial position was that individual homeowners should be responsible for procuring an acoustic engineer or expert to ensure that the decibel levels during testing did not exceed 55 decibels.
"We're talking about hundreds of applications here," Baisley said. "It became very problematic. People started to complain that it was very burdensome."
The town backed away from the requirement. The Board of Health is expected to draft language in the near future carving out an exemption for homeowners to test their generators for 10 to 15 minutes on a periodic basis, according to Baisley, who said it is a shame that homeowners have to go to such lengths.
"It's like why don't we deal with the problem that is no power instead of putting in these generators that cost thousands and thousands of dollars?" Baisley said. "We shouldn't have this problem. I'm sorry. Something's wrong."
Staff writer Neil Vigdor can be reached at neil.vigdor@scni.com or at 203-625-4436.