I think you are right Hasbeen,
Those keen on off the grid are undertaking a major maintenance job.
I like the idea, but the cost of reliability is maintenance maintenance
and then more maintenance.

The push for alternative energy by increasing the amount of wind and/or
solar on the grid will be a reduction in percentage of up time.
This will be bad news for multistory buildings.
My brother-in-law lives on the 27th floor on the Gold Coast.

Hospitals etc will have no-break diesel backup which means having the
alternator running 100% of the time.

We all know that alternative systems could achieve 100% up time but
life being like it is things will always slip.
Anything less than 99.9% is unacceptable in CBDs and industry.
Actually that is one day every three months, perhaps 99.99% is needed.

We have mains power but I try to use as little as possible; I'm a light 'switcher-off' advocate and my progress through the house at night, when home alone, can be plotted by the lights that go on and off as I enter and leave rooms. The only lights that remain on are 12 volt supplementary lights that are battery powered and solar charged.

Our hot water system is solar and the mains booster is needed a couple of days a week during the middle of winter and then usually only for half an hour a day, or for a bit longer if we have family/friends staying.
There is a definite saving with the hot water system and a lesser saving with the lights which are more in the nature of being 'able to see lights' than ones to read or work by, batteries cost me nothing as I get them from a local trucking company that change their batteries after a certain life cycle so that they very rarely, if ever, suffer battery failure; there is lots of life left in them for my purposes.

I have friends who are way off the grid (some $30,000 off!) who are entirely dependent on solar power although their wood burning stove also boosts the hot (HOT!) water. They are on top of the Divide, east of Armidale NSW, so experience some cold weather.

Hasbeen, I hear what you say, but batteries are not what they used to be and now come with a ten to twenty year guarantee I believe.

I'm fortunate like many to have solar and mains. It's once to switch the lights on without wondering if the sun shone today.

After having no power for 5 days during the last flood, & being flood in I got sick of my 2 small generators.

I bought a 10 KVA 3 phase quiet running diesel gen set. Not only will it run the house without problems, it will run any of my equipment, any where I need to use it.

Trying to do that with solar power would be a huge joke.

It is optimistic to believe that the green ideologues would accept the obvious.

Hasbeen,

How does the diesel compare with the cost of mains power?
(What price certainty and continuity? Priceless when there's a flood).

I have a friend in New Zealand's South Island who uses a model steam engine to run a 12 volt alternator to charge his batteries.
His boiler is a small water-tube unit that he fires with chips.
Only operating costs are on lubricating and steam cylinder oil and a few dollars worth of each lasts a year or more.