I'm in a town of 30,000 people in the middle of the North Island of New Zealand.
Electricity is available at my gate, but when I built the house I had been involved in the rebuild of Christchurch after the earthquakes that leveled it in 2011, and was very unimpressed with the way the post quake was handled. Power, water and sewage were slow in being restored, so I decided better to handle it myself. Additionally, they payback on the system I bought was 9 years at 2020 electricity prices - and would be less now.
As a result of Christchurch, my house is 100% stronger than the building code requires - and is made of more flexible and resilient materials - (no brick walls, for example), iron roof screwed to the trusses etc.
I also installed 10KW of generation on the roof, 38kw/h of lead acid batteries (known tech, more bulky but lower fire consequences than lithium), 60,000 litres of water in tanks and insulated the hell out of the place. I have 2 off 4kw inverters supplying 230 vac, so the appliances are all standard.
All cooking is on bottled gas - I get 7 months from a pair of 18 kg bottles, hot water in spring through mid autumn is via a heat pump system (
https://www.econergy.co.nz/products/heat-pump-water-heaters/ ) and when the generation hours get low is via a 3kw wetback on a 25kw fire that heats the house. I burn about 9-10m3 of firewood a year, and currently have 3 years put away, just in case I need to take a year off cutting and splitting for some reason.
Otherwise, people come over and don't have any idea we aren't on the grid - it is just a very slightly different house to the usual box on a big section.
