Abstract: A standby generator including a weather alert receiver and a method of testing said standby generator. The method includes receiving any one of a plurality of weather alerts, determining if the received weather alert exceeds a priority level, determining a period of time in which the standby generator was last run in an exercise mode, and if the weather alert exceeds the priority level and if the period of time is above a testing threshold, automatically starting the generator and running it in an exercise mode. The control unit of the generator monitors for any one of a plurality of generator fault conditions, and provides an indication on a control panel of a detected generator fault condition. Both weather alert information and generator fault condition information can be relayed to a remote status display device.