Natural gas for generators in The Villages

Most Villages homes with gas get it from Peoples Gas. A Florida PSC filing notes that Peoples has served Sumter County since its 1997 merger with West Florida Natural Gas, and WKMG reported in January 2019 that Peoples served about 25,000 Villages customers at the time.

The newer southern villages added a second player. The City of Leesburg, working with a pipeline built through South Sumter Gas Company, began serving homes there, and Peoples challenged it at the Florida Public Service Commission in 2018. Here is how the record reads, from the PSC's own June 29, 2020 order:

• An administrative law judge awarded Peoples the Bigham North, Bigham East and Bigham West developments in a September 30, 2019 recommended order, and the PSC adopted it in a final order issued February 11, 2020.
• About 3,625 Leesburg customers in those Bigham developments moved to Peoples on June 1, 2020.
• Peoples and Leesburg then signed a territorial agreement setting service boundaries for the rest of Sumter County. Their joint petition said The Villages and Leesburg wanted Leesburg to serve future Villages developments in the county.
• The PSC approved that agreement as a proposed agency action on June 29, 2020. Such an order becomes final unless an affected person files a protest.

The practical takeaway: the name on your gas bill tells you who serves your home. If you have no gas bill, the next section shows how to check. The City of Leesburg says its gas system serves about 12,790 customers over 276 miles of pipeline, per its gas department page.

Bring your gas bill to the free estimate

You can usually answer this in five minutes, without calling anyone.

• Look for a meter. Walk around the house. A gas meter is a gray or silver dial unit on a pipe, usually on a side wall near the garage, with a smaller regulator attached. If you have one and it is active, gas reaches your home.
• Check your bills. A monthly bill from Peoples Gas or the City of Leesburg answers it outright, and names your utility. SECO Energy and Duke Energy bills are electric only.
• Check your appliances. A gas range, gas water heater, gas dryer or pool heater means gas is piped to the house.
• No meter at all? A gas main on your street does not mean your home has a service line. Ask the utility. Peoples Gas lists its Customer Care line as (877) 832-6747 on its generator page. The City of Leesburg lists (352) 728-9840 for gas availability on its gas page.

If you do have gas, one more detail matters. Your existing appliances already use some of the meter's capacity. A whole-home generator is a big new load on top of them, and the next section explains why that has to be checked, not assumed.

If you do not have gas and the utility cannot extend service, propane is the usual answer. In The Villages that means working within the district ARC manuals' 120-gallon limit on above-ground tanks, which our propane page explains in hours and days.

Have the installer confirm your meter at the estimate

A gas meter has a limit on how much gas it can pass, and a generator is hungry. The Generac 26 kW spec sheet lists natural gas use of 188 cubic feet an hour at half load and 333 at full load. Kohler's 26RCA spec sheet lists 180 at half load and 290 at full load. That demand stacks on top of your water heater, range and any pool heater.

Peoples Gas asks to be told about these installs. Its generator information page says more Floridians are adding permanent natural gas generators without telling the utility, and its reporting form asks a direct question: has a Peoples Gas field technician checked the size of the meter and regulator? That is the step to plan for.

Three things get checked:

• Meter and regulator. The utility decides whether the existing meter and regulator can deliver enough gas for the generator plus your appliances, or whether they need an upgrade. Neither Peoples nor Leesburg posts capacity numbers or upgrade fees online, so ask.
• Pressure at the generator. Generac specifies 3.5 to 7 inches of water column for natural gas at the generator inlet, at all loads.
• Pipe size. Generac says to size the fuel line for full load, based on run length and the number of fittings, using the tables in each model's installation manual. Kohler's 26RCA sheet, for example, calls for 1 inch pipe on a 25 foot run and 1 1/4 inch from 50 to 150 feet. Generac's support site notes it does not size lines or regulators itself, so your installer does.

An undersized meter or pipe can let a generator start fine on a test and then stumble when the air conditioner kicks on. Getting this right on paper is what makes a long run possible.

Ask for a written gas load check with your estimate

The case for gas is simple: there is no tank to run dry. A propane generator in The Villages is usually limited by what fits under the ARC rules, and a 120-gallon tank holds about 96 usable gallons. On a Generac 26 kW at half load, that is about 47 hours. Natural gas arrives through a buried main, so runtime depends on the utility's supply and on maintaining the engine, not on a delivery truck.

The utility's own storm record is encouraging. In a May 30, 2025 release, Peoples Gas said its underground system is typically resilient in severe weather, and that in the 2024 storms fewer than 1% of its more than 500,000 customers had a gas service interruption. In an October 2024 post it put the Helene and Milton losses at about 1,400 customers, mostly because of structural damage to homes and businesses. These are company statements, not an independent audit, but they match what most gas customers saw.

Peoples also asks customers to leave gas service on even when they evacuate, because keeping meters on maintains line pressure and can help keep floodwater out of the lines.

For scale, a Generac 26 kW at half load uses about 4,512 cubic feet of gas a day by spec-sheet math. You never see that number except on the bill, which is the point: the fuel is there in hour 47 the same as in hour 1. That is what lets a household plan for a week or more of outage instead of a day or two. Our fuel runtime page compares the numbers side by side.

See how many days your home could run on gas

Gas is the strongest fuel option here, not a guarantee. A few limits are worth knowing.

• Supply upstream. In the February 2021 Texas winter storm, the FERC and NERC staff report found that natural gas fuel supply problems made up 87% of the fuel issues behind power plant outages, as wellheads froze and production fell. The same report notes that local gas distribution companies serving homes normally hold firm supply and transport contracts, unlike many gas power plants. That was an extreme cold event in Texas. We are not saying Florida will repeat it, only that gas comes from somewhere.
• Hurricanes offshore. During Hurricane Ida, a DOE situation update on Sept. 5, 2021 reported about 86% of federal Gulf of Mexico gas production still shut in. Pipelines and storage carry the system through events like that, but it is a reminder that supply chains have links.
• Damage at the house. Peoples said most of its 2024 losses came from structural damage to homes and businesses. A tree through the meter is still a problem.
• The engine. Gas never runs out, but oil does. Generac asks for a shutdown every 24 hours to check oil and, when running continuously above 85 F, an oil change every 100 hours. A three-week outage is roughly five oil changes on a Generac in Florida heat. See our long-outage maintenance page.

None of this argues against gas. It argues for a complete plan: the right meter, a properly sized line, a spare oil kit on the shelf, and an installer who explains each limit in plain words.

Ask your installer to walk through the limits too

The decision usually makes itself once you know what is at your meter.

• Gas at the house. Natural gas is the usual choice for a long-outage plan. The work is mostly a properly sized line from the meter to the generator, plus the utility's check on the meter and regulator.
• Gas on the street, not at the house. Ask the utility whether a service line can be run and what it would take. Then weigh that against propane.
• No gas nearby. Propane it is. Under the district ARC manuals, an above-ground tank tops out at one 120-gallon tank, hidden from the road and neighbors. Buried tanks are permitted, but fire code setbacks of 10 feet from the building and property line, per a fire marshal summary of NFPA 58, rule them out on many lots. Read the propane limits page before deciding.

Either way, right-sizing matters more with propane. A smaller generator with load management can stretch a small tank much further than an oversized unit running the pool pump. Our sizing guide helps you list what must run, and the gas vs. propane comparison covers cost and upkeep.

At the free estimate, ask your installer to write the fuel plan into the quote: which fuel, which utility, who checks the meter, and how many hours or days the plan supports at your expected load. That one paragraph tells you more about your preparedness than the brand name on the box.

Get a fuel plan written into your free estimate