Best strategy for power backup in case of cuts?

Fill up the freezer with bottles of water. The fuller it is, the longer it will keep everything frozen. Thermal mass is your friend.

Otherwise, do your know how many kWh per day your chest freezer uses? How long of an outage do you want coverage for? That gives you a kWh figure which tells you how big a battery you might need.

If you expecting to use the items in the freezer during a power cut, a second freezer could be used to decant items you're going to use soon, to reduce the times you open the main freezer.

(4) an EV which will allow use of the battery pack for other purposes, be it mains sockets inside, 'vehicle to load' (charger port turns into mains socket), or a direct tap off the battery (eg disconnect the battery from the car and use it as a stationary battery on wheels - old EVs like the Nissan Leaf are cheap now)

Theo

How long a period without power do you wish to prepare for?

backfeeding whole house really not recommended

UPS or small petrol generator for deep freeze already unplugged from dysfunctional 'renewable' grid much better.

Current El Niño is providing extremely 'unusual' weather. It might be warm and rain all winter. 10 ft snow drifts or just cold and dry. No one has a ***ing clue.

What is sure is that all fuel and electricity prices will be woefully high, because Trump. And renewables

Don’t forget to factor in the value of the freezer contents compared to the cost of all these back-up scenarios. ;-)

Tim

The latent heat of fusion is your best friend. If the bottles are filled with salt water, of about half the salt concentration needed to make a saturated solution, then the temperature during thawing will stabilise for some time at about -10degC. A saturated salt solution has a freezing point of about -21degC which is a bit too low as many freezers are run at about -18degC. John

If the freezer contents had no value, then no backup would be needed…

So, run the freezer down before leaving for the long winter sojourn, turn the freezer off before departure, and enjoy the benefits of reduced electricity consumption while away and the interest earned by not spending the money on backup, then laugh when you hear that the electricity has gone off for the nth time. What’s not to like?

I can't really think of anyone else who has done so much to promote renewables as Trump

'Through the windmills of his mind'.

Why does he have a 'thing' about "windmills"? - which most rational people call "Wind generators", since precious little milling is going on.

But not a very great deal of generation either inland in this country considering their cost, and other disadvantages.

Choosing a UPS the peak current on starting the compressor may actually be a limiting factor as well as the total capacity. Maybe power factor correction would help, I don't know?

Bit of a tangernt but I'd suggest putting up a few PIR nigh5lights - especially near stairs - in case there's a power cut at night.

Wouldn't work for me, my freezer is the biggest vertical freezer you can buy which is always full of food