Whole house generator or solar panels for new house?

Yes, this csn work quite well. We have some V2L set ups with PHEVs. An advantage of those cars is that after the car’s not enormous traction battery is somewhat depleted, if you have gas in the tank, the car becomes a super efficient load sensing generator that runs only when needed.

During a warm weather power failure, the thing that really sucks big power is air conditioning. If you can temporarily manage without that for a short time until power is restored, then the size of your house doesn’t matter much. If you look at the truly essential things to run in a power failure (for us: fridge, a few house fans, a few lights, maybe 1 lcd TV, and internet/wifi for communication) and add up the total watts drawn, then you determine that car(s) (HV, PHEV, or EV) can usually supply your power needs for weeks. Also, we have gas for cooking, but if we had an electric stove (as these draw a bit of power), we could easily cook outside on a barbecue or wood stove to preserve electricity.

We can even do the same with our house during a cold weather power failure since our furnace is fed by natural gas (but the controller, thermostat, and blower motor are all of course electric) since l can feed the small amount of AC electricity that the furnace needs from an external source. Same with our tankless gas water heater.

We went from gas to a heat pump. Which is nice for efficiency but vulnerable to a winter outage. That’s where home battery + solar really makes a difference. (or for summer AC in Rick’s case in Florida)

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I didnt read all the replies, but I will just say that I live in a relatively standard NJ suburb, but for bunch of reasons we lose power ALLLL the time. Many friends have gas powered generators and while its not the end of the world, it IS a major hassle to drag them out, fire them out, maybe go get more gas etc (ESPECIALLY during something like Superstorm Sandy). We have a full house generator run by propane. Among many bad ones I have made, THIS was one of the best investments ever. It kicks on within about 2 seconds of power going out, it powers our whole house if needed, and the propane and service are not too pricey. Where I live it is SOOOO worth it.