[Crowbob]

I'm thinking at absolute minimum in a crisis you could get by with running a whole house gererator for only 4 hours/day. Two hours in the morning and two hours around dinnertime. That would keep the fridges operational, run the well pump, recharge batteries and electrically heat up some water twice per day.

My thinking is during an emergency extended power-outage I can adjust my comfort tolerance way up if I had to. It doesn't make sense to me to pretend to live like normal during an emergency. That requires tremendous energy consumption. I have no fear of huddling around a small propane catalytic heater if it keeps us from freezing to death.