I was in another country when there was a power outage at home. My internet went down, the server restart but couldn't reconnect anymore because the optical network router also had some problems after the power outage. I could ask my folks to restart, and turn on off things but nothing more than that. So I couldn't reach my Nextcloud instance and other stuff. Maybe an uninterruptible power supply could have helped but the more I was thinking about it after just didn't really worth the hassle anymore. Add a UPS okay. But why not add a dual WAN failover router for extra security if the internet goes down again? etc. It's a bottomless pit (like most hobbies tbh)
Also (and that's a me problem maybe) I was using Tailscale but I'm more "paranoid" about it nowadays. Single point of failure service, US-only SSO login (MS, Github, Apple, Google), what if my Apple account gets locked if I redeem a gift card and I can't use Tailscale anymore? I still believe in self hosting but probably I want something even more "self" to the extremes.
This also makes self-hosting more viable, since our availability is constrained by internet provider rather than power.
Of course that means we’ll not have another ice storm in my lifetime. My neighbors should thank me.
A year later another atmospheric river hit and we had a 4 hour outage. No more jokes.
Make sure to run that generator once every few months with some load to keep it happy.
> maintain my familiarity with it in case I need to use it late at night in the dark with an ice storm breaking all the trees around us.
That's the way to do it. I usually did my trial runs during the day with light readily available but underestimated how much I needed to see what I am doing. Now there's a grounding plug and a flashlight in the "oh shit kit".
Assuming their heating, cooking and hot water is gas, a house doesn't actually consume that much. With a 50kWh battery you can draw just under 300W continuously for a week. I'd expect the average house to draw ~200W with lighting and a few electronics, with a lean towards the evenings for the lighting.