Seabeck, not sure what it is like further north but here Solar is only good for the summer from what I understand of the current solar panels (I could be wrong, would love to use solar and be off the grid completely).
4570 - I am not a prepper and in our area, we are finding power to be down about 24 hours worse case (we just had a massive windstorm and were without power for 12 hours). Most of the lines are getting buried around here. I am also not a prepper. I figure at this point I am too old and too fat to be much more than a zombie lunch. We will always have a generator around the farm, so after the batteries crap out we will go to gas if necessary. I would assume knowing my wife, that we will be in a hotel or shacked up with friends who have power by the time the generator is needed.