Does very little to offset things like no power for hospitals, refrigerated food distribution, manufacturing of almost anything.

Also the sewer system backs up after about a week because the pumping and lift stations need power to operate.

The water system shuts down because the tanks aren't reserve supply they're pressure support.

And solar plus storage will keep you running for maybe a week if you're conservative and mostly don't use anything...which doesn't help you if it's months till replacement.

solar + storage + water sheath fireplace can run pretty much till you run out of wood.

But yes, unless you spend serious money (own sewer, water from underground etc), it's basically solution for "the power pole is down", not any grid wide problems.

> unless you spend serious money (own sewer, water from underground etc)

It is often the case (at least where I live) that having a septic system and well is far more economical than obtaining a property with access to city utilities.

Perhaps, but municipal water runs by gravity whereas your well pump doesn’t operate during a power failure.

Our bore pumps are all solar powered inline immersion pumps fitted to boreholes under older still standing windmills.

They're off grid, and can be swapped out if the PV panels or immersion pumps fail.

Ideally you should be pumping into tanks in any case, for the buffer, and those tanks can be placed on a hill to gravity feed .. or pump with a motor.

Here's a typical setup, sans old windmill: https://youtu.be/iZAMm_S3GNQ?t=383

(same rough area (W.Australian wheatbelt) not our land)

I mean "run out of wood" is the problem though. There aren't that many trees, certainly not enough for everyone in a region to start doing it.

You'd be better off with an air sourced hear pump for hot water anyway - the one in my house uses less power then my dehumidifier.

> no power for hospitals

Which have days worth of backup generator power

> refrigerated food distribution

Do you think refrigerated trucks trail big long extension leads to a socket somewhere?

Refrigerated trucks pick up from refrigerated distribtion centers/warehouses.

Have a wee guess at what the big boxy things beside the distribution centres with "AGGREKO" written on the side in big orange letters, a big exhaust pipe sticking out the top, and seriously massive electrical connections at one end are.

There's a lot of bizarre sniping comments here coming from users who seemingly have _zero_ experience living outside of high uptime largish municipal grids.

It's incredible, isn't it? I get similar when I point out that while it's nice that they believe in the whole gas stoves vs. induction hobs thing (a gas stove fills the air with toxic pollution and an induction hob doesn't, IF you seal the room with the gas stove up absolutely airtight and burn fried food on it compared to using the induction stove to slightly warm a pan of water in a well-ventilated room), a gas stove solves a problem I have in a way that an induction stove doesn't.

"Oh but we never get power cuts here!"

Yeah. Try living in a part of the world where 140mph winds for four weeks just just Normal January Weather.

"But if I got power cuts for more than a few hours I'd complain to the provider!"

Yeah. That sure is going to help rebuild 30 miles of blown-over 275kV power line that runs through some of the most inaccessible country even if it's not storm-force winds that prevent access by boat and fallen trees that prevent access by land. Complain all you like, but doing beats talking.

The context of this subthread is the intentional destruction of "large, bespoke transmission transformers" so the on-site backup generators will hold you over for a few days, maybe a week or so until they run out of fuel. Meanwhile the lead time on replacing those transformers is years, and that doesn't account for the collapse "into the Stone Age" that is unfolding in the meantime.

You know you can just get someone to rock up with a tanker lorry and put more fuel in, right?

It's expensive these days but it's something I do across a few hundred sites about once or twice a year.

Way stations still need power to accept and refrigerate shipments. Distribution isn't just on trucks - although they could act as a small stopgap that also prevents them from making deliveries while being used as storage.