This is something I put a lot of thought into recently...

If you only have 1 or 2 cages, I think something like this : http://www.amazon.com/Schumacher-PP-...6815167&sr=8-2 would run your setup for at least several hours. I would love to see someone with electrical knowledge chime in here and/or do some actual math on how many watts a battery like this could run for how long. My current setup uses 60w of heat tape that draws power ~50% of the time (on/off thermostat) and you can feel free to use me as an example I think a pretty awesome way to automate this is using a computer UPS backup that will kick on automatically if power is out (protection even if you aren't home). Again, I would love to hear an electrical person's opinion on this. It's my understanding that any "pure sine wave" unit can power a regular appliance. Old ones can only run computers? The question with those units is how long it would last.

This is assuming you can't have a generator, like me. For now I have a case of hot hands as backup.