I just had a 2 day outage followed up by a 1 day outage the day after.
I have a 22 kW Generac
Live in the north, no A/C.
Call me nutty, but I just used the propane-fired standby, basically, to run the well pump.
Rest of the time, other than quiet overnights, was a 2000 watt Honda inverter gasoline generator.
Man, that thing sips fuel, especially compared with the 22kW.
The standby is very convenient though.
I hadn't realized there was an outage when I woke up in the night*, and, hence the upcoming changes to my rule notifications, lol.
*I thought the cat knocked over a lamp.
There is a good deal of calculations that would go into calculating the pressure drop and line sizing. Basically, the line should be sized correctly to supply the needed pressure for all appliances to run at the same time with max BTU load. The line may have only been sized for the generator, and they just added the T without thought on how much BTU would be needed.
If the line is undersized it could cause issues with any of the appliances, due to insufficient pressure. Some appliances may still attempt to run and create a potentially dangerous situation.
If the line cannot be easily replaced, another option is to increase the regulator pressure as noted by @JRHintx, sometimes it is just a dial to adjust and other times the regulator would need to be upgraded.
Are you running on LP or NG, and do you know your regulator output pressure? For LP it is usually 12-14" WC, for Natural gas it can be anywhere from 8" WC to 2PSI (or more) depending on the location and gas piping used. On top of that, the line material type, distances for each branch, and each appliance BTU would be needed to calculate the pressure drops.
I’m running NG here. I do know when the generator was installed the gas company had to come out and put in a bigger regulator for the house but I’m not sure if the sizing. My NG piping in the house is 3/4”. I have NG for hot water heater (40 gallon), and commercial grade kitchen aid oven. Never had any issues with either staying lit when the generator runs but it was something that concerned me when I had my generator installed so I monitor it when we have a power outage and the Genny is on.
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One option would be to put your NID and cable modem on a small battery backup to cover the time until your generator kicks in. I do that for quite a few electronics innthebhouse including my devices that keep my internet available because I work from home.
