Something that I have been thinking about a lot lately is the idea of using solar power to charge batteries and then use that for "emergency" power at homes.
Manaufactured
Portable electric makes these great tools that are focused on movie productions, food trucks and festivals.
However, something that I have been thinking about is that these functions are very seasonal, and in the off season is the time that weather utility outages increase. If I had a fleet of these I would be able to rent them to festivals in the spring/summer and then rent to home owners as a generator alternative during the fall/winter.
DIY
Another option that seems to be popular is DIY. An example is this youtube video.
This guy built his own battery and put together a bunch of components into a toolbox. Probably not the best option, but this a great example of how you can put something together for "cheap" at home.
Open Source designs
Is anyone interested in open source designs for something similar to this? Let me know in the comments, give me some of your use cases and I will start putting designs together.
Cheers,
Jeff M