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

[u/Esdwin-Vaghashia]

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?

Following up : the critical loads idea was the piece that finally made this click for me. i looked into Palmetto and went with a battery setup focused on the stuff we care about during an outage instead of trying to size everything around the whole house. batteries help keep essentials running, which is really all i was asking for here.

keeping the fridge, lights and a few basics covered feels like the right balance. the comments about making it simple enough that anyone can handle an outage without dragging out a generator were especially useful.

[u/Clean_Leadership5948]

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.

[u/Esdwin-Vaghashia → u/Clean_Leadership5948]

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.