Well yesterday I lost power for about 3-4 hours. Normally this is not a huge issue as the phone works and the laptop will work for 2ish hours. I have a portable 12v battery from CDN tire that I can use for another hour or so. But the battery was not charged and my laptop battery is toast (meaning it will not hold a charge). I have a second one that I will be switching to but think that it might be in the same state.
I have wanted to have a backup generator up here since before we bought the place. My goal was to install a propane generator the size of a mini freezer. This would be an auto start generator and would be able to run as long as there is propane. The main reason was that I was not sure how long we would be able to be up here. Turns out for the first year I was able to be up here about 85% of the time. So we held off. The main reason is cost. We do not have propane so would have to get a large tank and then the generator which is not cheap.
Anyways I still think that I will go with that route but when we have more money to invest and mostly for the winter when things can freeze. In the meantime I think that I will be looking at solar panels so that we can have power to keep working in the event that the power cuts out. In the summer the 2 main things we need power for is water (no juice no water pump) and power for the PCs. Sure the fridge needs it but you can work around that with a cooler and cooking on the BBQ is fine.
I also want to get a solar pre-heater for the water heater as that is an easy fix.
These are not the cheapest solutions out there but I want to think for the longer term and also do not want to add to the drone of the generators that you hear when the power cuts out for more than an hour. I also think that it would be very cool to be able to cut the use during the summer months when we have lots of sun and can lower the use.