... exactly All4One, all well and good to carry on about relying...

... exactly All4One, all well and good to carry on about relying on batteries and giving the bird to the power companies, but reality is forget it unless you want to return to the dark ages...literally.

I have heard of many farms running off solar and batteries, but they have a nice big diesel generator in the shed that kicks into life the moment the batteries run low, try that in suburbia and see what the neighbours think!

A lot of people really haven't a clue what kw hours they truly need to run basics...eg; the iron for just ironing your clothes needs around 1000 watts continuous, the good old electric kettle needs around 2000 watts and upward...the vacuum cleaner around 2000 watts and so on. Lighting needs are usually quite low, but that means only one or two lights on at night.
Oh yeah, forget about using the air conditioning too...around 1000 watts plus continuous for a one small room.

As I wrote, when you want to run on battery power as boaties often do, you read and know the power requirement of everything you might use and avoid the big power devices or rely on the generator running the whole time.