Good ideas. I'm getting one of the cheap 75 watters to charge my NimH batteries without taxing my car batteries.

I'm completely symied on the long term question. I have a brunton solar charger but that's only enough to charge 4 AA batteries per day, on a good bright day. That's just enough to keep one or two flashlights and a mini-radio fed indefinitely, but the laptop and TV are out.

Generators eat a lot of gas, and I live in a big city. So I'm screwed if the power is out for more than a few days except for the small flashlight and radio.