A three-day blackout during a 2023 winter storm convinced one homeowner that a portable generator was the clearest answer for future outages. Eighteen months later, they turned to a battery system that cost $1,300 and worked with the solar panels they already had, making backup power easy enough that the generator had not come out since. What happened? On Reddit, the owner of a five-acre property outside Austin said they bought a Honda EU2200i g…