> Those that do want to be their own electric company are called "off grid"

That's also my point, perhaps not clear in my poor English and quick writing: I do not want to be totally off-grid simply because it's crazy in costs terms for a marginal outcome BUT I want to be "off-grid capable for a potentially long time" witch is again the better "cost optimization" IMO, I mean the sole reason to have a lithium storage is protect themselves from blackouts. Even with skyrocketed energy prices batteries still not pay back at all. So the cheapest individual options are:

- just grid-connected p.v., you can lower the bill around 50% and the whole setup pay back at actual grid rate in a not so big number of years 5-10 maximum from a country to another. There is no protection against blackouts [1]

- AC-coupled or hybrid inverters with a battery, smaller enough to nearly pay back mixing the blackout backups protection + the little maximization of self-consumption during the day and the little authorized discharge (10-15% DOD) per day

Now just an year ago for most people in the western world protection against blackouts was simply too costly and essentially not needed. Blackouts war VERY rare and VERY short if any in an whole year, in few years. Nowadays for various reasons they start to be, at least they loom as an issue how seems getting bigger and bigger. Now running on a backup generator never pay back and have MANY issues, while a not so big battery, recharged by a small generator in few hours (when noise is not an issue etc) offer an expensive anti-blackout protection that probably do not pay back entirely but at least a bit and as for the resistive heating I call it "the best compromise" we can get now.

Yes, I got an wood stove (two actually, one potentially hydro even if I never made the plumbing and not even knowing what I really need to add precisely) and I have woods, and a bit of bush on my own, but that's meant for pleasure (seeing the flames sometimes in the evening) and real damn emergency usage. On a regular basis it's not much comfortable to use them, I do not have even enough wood for an entire whole winter... Something I can buy that can work automatically most of the time, enough to pay back a bit is far more welcomed...

My reasoning is that I already have p.v. and a small storage (8kWh) as a backup protection for freezers/fridges/VMC/computer/... It's expensive but lower my bill and it already protect me well, even if that happen only three times for few hours and a bit more for just few/less then a minute. It might help to lower the opex of a future EV since I WFH and so I tend to be at home during most days of the week the best I can do to maximize the ROI is using as much energy as I can, of course for something useful, not just to waist it... For instance for AcS I find better when I can (most of the year) heat it with it's built-in resistence instead of the heat-pump because it make the equipment last far longer and I can't use anyway the producible energy. If I decide in the end to expand the hot water storage also for heating well... Calculation are a bit complex and unfortunately that seems not a popular choice so even technicians I can find do not help much... Surely I'll integrate the wood stove, of course, it should be relatively easy and cheap and potentially really useful, but for the rest I do not know... I found very few "big enough" air-water heat-pumps not so expensive, but can't really know how well they can run in winter despite they formal claims.

[1] very few inverters/microinverters declare to been able to produce AC from p.v. without the grid or a battery BUT they can't sustain essentially any peak load, witch means you need special equipment that mount/lower their power consumption slowly and can survive a sudden energy drop if just a cloud pass by.