Rob Patrick wrote:
....
Isabel knocked out my power for 15 hours, I've decided to finally look
for a whole-house backup system.

Whole house would likely be prohibitive. On my smaller clocks, they
often take a 9V battery. Or I just suck it up and reprogram the time
(the new clocks set themselves - handy for a guest room where I'll
sometimes move the clock around and put it back when guests come.

....


I'd like to get the thoughts of anyone out there about the wisdom of
connecting the whole house to a big UPS. It seems to me like the ideal
system would have an automatic generator for extended outages but a
battery to handle short outages and to keep power flowing while the
generator started.


I've also done very very large power systems. For data centers. We
lose power and it will take easy 24 hrs to get machines up and recovered
right. UPSs cover us for maybe an hour, then the generator gets kicked
on. A second mortgage, and you'll be set It's uncheap.

Go for a reasonable in between. mom (in ma) loses power for 2-3 days at
a time. Between the gas stove for cooking, wood stove for heat (not a
special purchase, just more useful in when the icestorms take down 4
miles of power and the main furance fails), she charges flashlights and
a flourescent lantern at work.

She and a friend of mine both got smallish generators. They power the
circuit with the fridge, kitchen lights, the well pump (showers) and
have enough to run an extension cord from the kitchen ciruit to the
TV and DVD (cable usually dies with the power. stupid trees). That
means she's not lost power since she got this

A friend has many solar panels. They charge a pair of excessively large
batteries. Said batteries can power the important parts of the house for
a couple days of no power and no sun. His meter usually runs backwards
in the day and forwards at night. Net metering means his annual power
bill costs a bit less than a nice dinner.


Bottom line: You likely don't need the whole house "on". If you live
with essencials and perhaps want to ponder generating your own power for
extras (think how much a windmill would have done yesterday!), you can
do the generator thing. It's not even that rare in homes to have a
cutover for a critical couple ciruits. A small generator can be
affordable (tho loud and smelly). They were pretty cheap after y2k
didn't pan out as a crisis.