For the first while after we bought the property, we had no electricity on site. We ran battery-powered lights, charged phones off battery packs when we could, and trickle-charged here and there. In practice we were camping on our own land every weekend, and for a time that was enough.
When we did need real power (for tools, charging, or the odd convenience), we had to run a generator. That was when the trade-offs became impossible to ignore. Generators also bring real safety concerns, which we knew well as we’d already had one catch fire overnight in our winter setup.
The generator was loud. One of the reasons we’d bought the land was for peace and quiet: no traffic, no city hum, just the forest. Firing up the generator meant throwing that away for the whole stretch we had it on. It was also expensive. It needed premium fuel, and we were burning through $30-40 in gas per day whenever we used it. For a place we visited on weekends, that math didn’t work. We needed something that could give us power without the noise and the ongoing cost.
