Miminal low cost power outage preps

This won't keep your fridge or AC going but it will keep phones charged, power LED lighting and give you some power for laptops or small appliances for short periods.

Parts needed:
1) A 12V solar panel, I've got 20W, but ideally you want
more. 20W will do your phones and router, but not
much else.
2) A 12V charge controller able to handle enough power for
panel.
3) An AGM 12V battery.
4) Appropriately sized inline automotive fuses.
5) A multi cigarette lighter adapter.
6) An AC inverter for 120V
7) Phone and laptop charging adapters.
8) Adapter to run your DSL/cable modem off 12volts.
9) Volt meter

Two fuses off your battery, one to your charge controller and one to your inverter. I leave the inverter fuse out except when using it, its expensive power wise to run.

Connect the cigarette lighters to the load side of the charge controller. It will disconnect the load when the battery gets dangerously low. Complete discharge can kill batteries pretty quickly.

Connect the panel to your charge controller. Just leave it hooked up all the time. The batteries like to be at full charge as much as possible. Much longer life that way.

Always turn off and disconnect inverter when not in use. It pulls lots of amps when in use, too much for most small charge controllers load output, so I've got it going straight to the battery.

You can use your meter and a charging table to see how much charge you've got left. Do you have enough to run the laptop for a while and still run your lights later? You can buy cheap cigarette lighter volt meters designed for cars.