Jumping in a bit late here, sorry for that.

Two thoughts on generators while the power is out:

1) For longer term there is also a psychological factor to those around you. The power went out here for a week at a time twice last year. During the day it wasn't really much to hear the generators running. After dark fell and we'd laid down to bed the only thing you could hear was the two generators in the neighborhood. After a few nights of being kept up by them it was easy to resent them. That's one more advantage of having them set up with batteries. The ability to still provide power to what you need without drawing as much unwanted attention.

2) It's possible to modify a chest freezer into a chest fridge that consumes about 0.1 kWh per day*. Making modifications like that may allow you to use a less expensive setup, run more devices or have more head room.

*http://www.mtbest.net/chest_fridge.html an example of a chest fridge.