Yes, I have been totally off grid for 15 years now and live like anyone else except I don't have power outages when problems occur. I really like it. If the lights go out it is my problem, I get it sorted and will usually have something working within a few minutes.
I have a modest system with lithium iron batteries which basically run two households ( the main house and my daughters tiny house in the back of my garage. We don't skimp on power useage just run like a normal household. My system will give power for about 24 hrs. I have recently put in a 10 kva diesel generator which will charge my batteries and boost my solar hot water when required. I don't hesitate to use it when required. If it has been an exceptionally gloomy day and little has gone into the batteries by lunchtime I will turn it on and within about 3 hrs the batteries will come up from say 50% to 100%. Some people have hangups about running a generator, I don't.
A neighbour recently built a new house and put in a massive system of batteries and solar array, thought he would never need to start a generator but the run of very gloomy weather we had in early winter had him pulling it out but he couldn't use it because the generator and his system both had earth/neutral links and the earth leakage would throw out as soon as he switched it on, just was not set up right so they were miserable skimping on power for a couple of days.
All my power goes through a Victron Connect Inverter/solar charge controller/battery charger. I think Victron stuff is pretty good and worth looking into. It has bluetooth monitoring and programming if you are up to that but settings can also be changed manually with dip switches which is more my cup of tea. I also have online monitoring of my system where it goes through my router to Victron and I log into on my laptop in the comfort of my lounge and can see the state of charge of my batteries and what is going in and out.
You just have to decide what your expectations are and spend accordingly. In my opinion you don't need massive battery banks. A good array of modern panels will get your batteries back up in a couple of hours of a morning.
I've waffled on a bit too much already Smokin, I would be happy to answer any questions you have.
Ken
PS my wife bought a very nice unit about the size of what I run the house on for her stable block. The batteries, inverter, charge controller and battery charger from a generator are nicely housed in a steel unit and well set up, all we had to do was put panels on the roof and plug into the unit and earth it and good to go. They are made by an Australian company but are worth looking up on line
https://redearth.energy/
The Black Max is the one Pam has but they go up in size from there. They may even be available in the US but anyhow they will show you the possibilities of these ready made systems.
