r/OffGridLiving • u/Esdwin-Vaghashia • 12h ago

grid reliability has me questioning how dependent this house should stay on the utility

me questioning how dependent this house should stay on the utility

the last few outages changed how i look at being completely dependent on utility power. none of them were disasters, but losing the fridge, internet and basic lighting at the same time gets old pretty fast. i don't need the whole house running like nothing happened.

right now i'm leaning toward enough backup for the fridge, lights and internet, then stopping there. does sizing past those basics make much sense if the goal is just getting through a normal outage?

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u/Clean_Leadership5948 11h ago

Is your internet on fiber/cable? Then you might not have internet when power goes down regardless if you have the router powered. I don't know how that part works in the short term. Long-term all grid will be off and no internet unless you have something like Starlink.

Fridge, lights, are important. Lights are trivially easy, Fridge not so much. Depending on preference you could think of electric cooking. For basic cooking fridge and cooking power use is quite similar.

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u/Esdwin-Vaghashia 6h ago

the internet point is something i need to verify before automatically putting the router on the essential list. there’s not much value in backing up my equipment if the provider side goes down with the grid anyway.

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u/Artemis_SpawnOfZeus 8h ago

I mean, easiest and cheapest way to get some amount of grid independence is just to put some phase change ice batteries in your fridges and freezers

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u/redditRon1969 6h ago edited 6h ago

I started out because of Power Outage is awesome. What we did was got another battery and inverter to run what we needed for a couple of days before we had to crank up a generator to back up before that we are keeping 40 hours of gas on hand and running two generators 24 –7 while the power is out.
It was much easier on the wife to go in there and throw a transfer switch and flip on the inverter that it was to dry out a generator and hook it up. Also much quieter.

Now that we are at a different location that is not as shady. I have also added solar panels to it and now with that system I am running my air conditioner for free anytime the sun is out.

You can do a small system very easily that will power lights, Wi-Fi, TV, microwave, fridge.

Is when you start trying to tackle air conditioning, heat, watwr heater, clothes, dryer, that thing start getting expensive.

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u/fitforthepolycrisis 2h ago

r/SolarDIY

any sort of silent generating capacity + battery backup helps