Recent storms have left many people in the area without power for hours at a time. Have you ever been right in the middle of something important and the power goes out? I think we all have.
If this happens to you frequently you may want to consider having your home wired with a generator transfer switch. With this box you put a couple of important circuits that you use the most and when the power goes out you just plug the cord going to this box into a portable generator and you have power running to those couple of circuits.
If you want to energize the entire home it is possible to use a whole house transfer switch but it is going to take a much larger generator like a home backup generator that will sense the power is out and automatically start up sending power to the entire home until it senses the power is back on at which point it will turn itself off.
There are many different options available just be sure to have a competent electrician do the wiring to make sure there is no power feedback from your generator going into the power line that could harm a utility worker that may be working on your power outage.