I'm thinking of buying solar panels, a panel here, a panel there, over time, and getting a battery bank and inverter in the house... Then I need to wire the circuit panel to allow me to selectively reroute power to different circuits.
The biggest problem is air conditioning. My big double units need about 16Kw startup power. 2 years ago I bought a newer, much more energy efficient model, and that has saved me a lot, because it uses much less power. I need to replace the second unit but that will run me about $5000.
I bought one of these portable A/C units just for one bedroom that I could hook up to the generator:
But as I said, setting up the generator itself takes a lot of effort and time and as the power company kept saying power would be restored in about an hour I never bothered.
I need something simpler--just to plug in the A/C unit above, a lamp and maybe my laptop tethered to my cell phone.
You've got to understand--I was WITHOUT Free Republic for 12 whole hours yesterday!!!!
In the heat.
It was also raining all that time and the humidity was 99% so open windows didn't help.
The horror, the horror...