Yes but only for a temporary amount of time. It depends also on the size of your generator and within reason of how much electricity you need to use. All the lights and machines can't be on but you can get by on a generator. I have heard of people building/buying bicycle powered generators to run their house electronics. I remember on one season of the Real World, if they wanted to use the computer they needed someone else to be peddling power in order to have it run. Think green :-) 3500W generators will run your appliances such as frig, freezer, washer, dryer, sump pump, etc. A 15,000W generator will run most households and all that comes with them. Hospitals have backup generators in case of power outages so machines and life support systems will not fail but those are hefty little gen's.