I live in Oklahoma and we get a lot of severe weather/tornadoes here in the spring time so our key power company OG&E is pretty well versed at getting power restored quickly and response times are pretty decent. I've lived here all my life and have never been without power for more than a day, but we've had some major ice storms and people I know have lost power for a longer periods of time.

Hey guys, thanks! It is actually not very special set up LOL Three group 29 marine deep cycles of the cheapest batteries I could get which were Walmart ever starts made by Johnson Controls. And a diehard 750 Watt inverter from Sears. The pump has a four amp current draw and the funny thing is I love the diehard inverter because it has a live real-time wattage meter! It's running dry it will pull about 430 W. When pushing water about 710 so I am running pretty close to the limit! It is just a simple modified sine wave inverter nothing fancy. The funny thing is if I close the ball valve On my pump the wattage draw will go down, so literally the motor works harder the more water that it is pushing… Which makes sense but I thought it was neat to watch real time with the inverters display. I have a very small trickle charger topping off the batteries… Automatic 1.5 amp only LOL. This really is a bare-bones set up but it works great! The power outages are so far and few in between that that gets the job done! Thankfully my sump pump is only 1/3 hp… For larger higher-quality ones would pull far  too much power for the little inverter. I suppose I could have invested in a separate battery backup sump pump but I really wanted to make something neat that would do the job from scratch, for a project :-). I have a RadioShack relay, which I was disappointed is made by Tyco, they used to be made by Siemens! I hope Tyco is durablee! I know you could not kill Siemens! So I was pretty disappointed when I saw that RadioShack switch suppliers. But it seems to be doing the job. It has a 120 fold AC coil and I am using it to connect power to the sump pump but when the coil let's go… When the power goes out… It swings up and touches the other poles attached to the inverter which is always on. So Is the battery charger. I have a little indicator lights that glow green when the mains are running and red when it is on battery backup wired to the relay directly this way I know if the relay has failed just by opening the cellar door and peeking downstairs! I will take some pictures, it is quite a rough set up but works like a charm so far! I like crude Frankenstein (but safe!)  like wiring in this definitely has, I am sure that I have violated many building codes LOL but it is my sump pump backup project and I am confident with my wiring hehee :-) That is neat that you run off the grid ace! Oh into the fella that mentioned X-Files theme song… I love X-Files, I used to watch them all throughout the 1990s I remember me and dad watching the very first opener when it was raining frogs out of the trees may e spring of 1993?! What a shame it was for that show to go!
(Just an edit… I forgot to mention that the relay is rated 10 A on the contacts and my pump pulls 4-6 depending on the water flow. I think it is really neat that the higher the head pressure, the more I close the ball valve, the less amps the pump draws… So it is not related to the pressure but more to the water flow… You can hear the motor speed up the more flow you restrict it is a funny relationship! It does make sense that the more water more work and the more power… But something in my head says the more you cut the pump back and force it to produce higher pressure the more power it draws but it does not and I would never know this if it wasn't for watching the actual real-time wattmeter on the inverter! anyways the relay is a dual pole dual throw relay with a 120 V AC coil, I believe I paid around $8 at Radio Shack, I am just worried that Tyco is not as good as Siemens which used to make the relays RadioShack sold) Oh, and the ball valve… The only reason it is even in there is so that I can cut off flow when working on the plumbing but I tend to play with it and that is how I found out how it varies current draw.