Twayne wrote:
I live in north Missouri where ice storms can readily
happen..... and knock power out

I also live alone and in rented duplex....so my needs
for power are smaller and require more portability than
others.

Having said that... I'm wondering if buying a small
Honda generator and 120 volt devices is better than say
getting jump start batteries and using them with 12volt
devices (lights, etc)

Wow; a lot of responses, some good, some well, not so.

Basically IMO it depends on what you need and how long an outage you
want to plan for.
As long as it's only a little light, the radio & maybe small TV, you
would be fine with 12V devices. If you need to continue life as though
the power weren't out, neither solutio would help unless it was a good
sized genset.

If you have to provide heat (freezing weather or colder) or air
conditioning, use anything that draws substantial current (any large
item; refrigerator, freezer full of meat, microwave, toaster, lots of
lights and gosh knows what, you should work out the wattage you need by
adding those all up according to what's on the nameplates, and get a
generator of at least that much capability, which may top 3,000 watts
worse case.
In a way, living alone adds additional btu requirements since there
aren't others there to contribute body heat either.

IMO if you don't have to worry about refrigerators, freezers, furnaces,
air conditioners, you'd be fine with batteries; just check how long they
last at the loads you'll place on them and go from there.
Oh, and if you have well water, you'd have something else to power,
too.

We have a 5,000 Wat generator and it will run our well pump, fridge and
freezer and a few lights all at once. But usually we kill the
regrigerator/freezer to run the well pump just to keep the generator
from being overly taxed; everything on makes it work really hard should
they all demand power at the same time.
There's a transfer switch: Start the genset and flick the switch, and
it turns on the house power thru its own set of breakers. So be sure to
add a Transfer Switch to the cost if you fo the generator route.
They're arond $100 plus installation which you'd need permission from
the owner to do.
In the overall, batteriy power it best if it can give you enough to
do the things you need to do for as long as the longest period of time
you think you'll need it.
Hmm, maybe a battery system and a small genset to charge the battery
system if it's needed? Nothing to install that way; just plug the
battery chargers nto the genset when you need to charge it. No transwer
switch, no installation.

HTH

Twayne





Instead of a transfer switch, you can just drag a couple of heavy-duty
extension cords with triple taps around (plug your light-duty cords into
that). It work pretty well, actually.

Bob