If you truly want to escape and not be more than electrically dependent than necessary there are things to be done that will help.
Often people first think of increasng electrical generation or supply capacity. Best though is to try to reduce electrical useage or needs. You have been through this already. Just apply a lot of that to your choice of power boats. There are many power vessels so fitted but you have to look around as the current thinking is often all electric.
---reduce lighting power needs by changing to LED. There are now lots of choices available. Warm white for cabin lighting is the nicest. Cool white for engine compartment and such where light colour is less important.
---reduce fridge power use. If you have an older energy hog type fridge then either get a new one with the Danfoss compressor or get the existing converted to use the Danfoss compressor. They do help. In addition try to improve fridge insulation as again lowering fridge heat gain is often more productive than the alternative. Use a muffin , 12V, fan to exhaust the hot air from the fridge cavity. If the fridge cannot get rid of heat it expells to the cavity then it cannot cool.
---Cabin heat/cooling. Can be one of many furnaces, diesel stoves, propane heaters. Lots of options. Look at the boat and how you think you want to use it. I'm not going to be too much help here untill you get further along.
--- Heat pumps, A/C require the use of a gen. unless plugged in all the time. No comment here as we don't have it and won;t.
---cooking. Can be all electric but needs that generator. If you don't want that or want to keep a gen. very small then options are propane. Many boats in our area are all electric. I know several folk who had all electric and went propane for cooking. Kept the gen. of course but that way it needs only be run to keep up the batteries from time to time.
Some others had propane but then installed a small diesel driven alternator unit to recharge the batteries directly rather than an A.C. gen.
---solar panels, if space is available, are a good way to keep the batteries up. Not foolproof as cloudy days do happen. Many folk do not expect to run off the panels but use them to slow the battery discharge rate down so instead of gen. use every day then maybe every three or so days.
---Gen. use should also mean using a good size battery charger to minimize gen. run time. Many people make the mistake of a too small charger meaning the gen., to recharge discharged batteries, must run for hours and hours. Not good for the gen. either as the load is extremely light.
---alternator should be as big as can be fitted properly WITH a three stage external regulator to get the best out of the main engine run time. This becomes very important if living on the batteries and running only relatively short times.
If the alternator is kept small and with an internal reg. then battery recharging will likely suffer. If a dock hopper it may not matter but if a gen.less cruiser it will matter, a lot. Often people don't want to deal with it failing to realize that the batteries only get the left over current from all the other loads. If you have a 60A alt. and you have standing loads from a radar, vhf, stereo, chartplotter, tablets, water pump, fridge and so on then the recharge rate will be down substantially from that 60A.
--- electronics such as boob tubes, stereos, wifi and computers I have deliberately ignored but if this is needed it will need to be accounted for in the power needs. I also have not allowed for nav. electronics as this is usually used only when the engine, alternator, is running.
There are many ways of setting the boat up. Don't be in a huge hurry to make a bunch of changes. Work with the boat for a time, 6 months or more, to see what you do and don;t like. Your ideas may/will change as time goes by. Do what is needed as temporary to get what you now want to operate, even if messy, and then study how to make the changes needed.
I would suggest energy reduction as a first and usefull step though as long as it is not tearing the boat apart.
Our boat is realtively simple, so far. DIesel stove for cool weather heat and cooking, single alcohol Origo and BBQ for summer cooking. The Origo does get used in the cool weather when needed . 660 AHr house battery bank, LED lgts, Danfoss driven fridge including cavity exhaust fan, no A/C, large 150A alternator [output controlled to ~110A], no gen., no solar yet but in plans, no tv or such, older radio. We do have a computer and tablets aboard.
Gotta go.
