[Columbotrek]

Hello, I am quite new on the generator scene and am looking at a generator for emergency power supply when the electricity stops. I have been doing some reading recently about the different types of generators available on the market. I have always known about inverters and always assumed i am going to be getting one. Later on i stumbled upon the generators with built-in AVR. I am torn between those two types at the moment. For comparison i have looked around at my local store available in the area and country and for the same price i could either get an inverter with a nominal capacity of 3.5-3.8 kW or an AVR of about 8kw of working capacity. (Both types on average have maximum consumption spikes of about base+500w)
The consumers i am going to power on are basic household appliances. TVs, Lights, Fridge and Refrigerator, Microwave AC, and most importantly a PC or two . Now i am quite clear that with the inverter i won't be able to power up some those at once, that is why i started looking at AVRs which generally have (for the same price) about double the watt ratings. What i am mostly concerned with is if the AVR is going to play nicely with the more sensitive items such as TVs and/or PCs (and am i going to experience problems with that, when other more demanding appliances turn on/off).
So my question is it worth handicapping myself with 3.5kw inverter to take use of its pure sine wave, or is the AVR going to be good enough at supplying steady voltage and freq to power up the more sensitive equipment, and also allow me to power up more consumers at the same time. Thanks for the help !

Like you, I wanted to support more watts than an affordable inverter type generator offered. I could not find a 12000 watt inverter. I would have to have bought two of them with a parallel kit. I had to over size to compensate for my circumstances. Namely my altitude and fuel choice. My AVR Westinghouse 9500DF <23% THD is powering all those things in my house including a 3 Ton Central HVAC. There were some things I had to tweek in, namely the output frequency to keep the UPS and smart dimmer lights happy, high altitude carburetor jet and gas orifice, and unbonded the neutral. Modern TVs, Computers, and other stuff have their own switching power supplies. The first thing they do is convert the line power to DC then recreate whatever they need from there. What does concern me are surges. I added 80K amps of type 2 surge protection to my transfer switch. The entertainment system, computers, and house network gear live behind APC UPS. Don't want to make any conclusions for you. Just saying the AVR generator set is working out for me.