The 8 house neighborhood has been on generators since Monday, 5 portables and 3 automatic stationary units. We all run our well pumps, TVs, computers, etc and no one has yet mentioned having any problems with electronic failures. If we are lucky, power will be restored by 10 pm tonight.
We've used a few rental generators, then bought a Craftsman 6300 generator in 2005 and now have a Ridgid 5700 that has cleaner power. Installing a transfer switch to power most of the house was the best thing ever. We power a ½ hp well pump 63’ deep, refrigerator, sump pump, gas furnace, microwave, washer and gas dryer, dishwasher, most interior lights, TVs, game consoles, computers, router, basically everything but the AC, electric hot water heater, electric ovens and stove top. Of course we do not try to run everything at once.
To the OP’s question, thinking way back in 2006 or so we did have a computer power supply failure, but there is no way to know if that was related to the Craftsman generator or not. The Ridgid generator has some stupid vapor recovery crap that caused it to pull too much vacuum on the fuel tank and stall. We dodged a few bullets because when it stalls under load bad things can happen electrically. I reworked the tank venting and it has been trouble free since. So 17+ years of generator operation many times a year for up to 2 weeks at a time and no confirmed electronic failures due to the generators. The other neighbors have been dealing with generators far longer as they said the power reliability was much worse before we moved in
Those of us with portables are discussing a group buy for whole house gen sets. This thread is timely because it reminds us to consider the quality of the generator output. I’d like to see a graph of that “pure sine wave” inverter output to see just how “pure” it is or if it is just marketing hype.
Given the likely increased disruptions to our local grid from the coming EV boondoggle, I think its time for us to get serious about a permanent automatic gen set. So now what fuel to select and if sizing the generator for the entire house is enough or to include extra for an EV, or more likely PHEVs, etc.
They make VFDs for well pumps, so yes, that could be used as a soft start. That said, I would be concerned about feeding a VFD with crappy generator power.