A number of people have been posting their experience of living without electricity in the comments. They should really be posted as answers so that they get the audience they deserve.
Back 1959–60, to improve my Irish language skills, my parents sent me to the Irish speaking island of Inisheer, the smallest of the three Aran Islands in Galway Bay. It was (and is) a wild place on the edge of the Atlantic and would not get electricity until 1973.
The population was about 350 and I loved it. I never missed the electricity at all. There were paraffin lamps for the evening. Ireland did not have TV yet so that was not missed. I made friends with local fishermen who made part of their living fishing in currachs
These were canoes made from a wooden frame covered with tarred canvas. They were glad to take me out as an extra worker who was not asking for anything in return. I had brought a fishing line (no rod) with a string of hooks with feathers as lures like this
They were spectacularly successful catching mackerel and pollack. On my last day of my first visit they cut them off my line and gave me a half crown
in compensation.
There were a few modern conveniences in some home.
One was the battery powered radio.
They did not have transistor radios yet so these things ate up batteries and so were only used for the news and special programs.
A few houses had kerosene powered fridges. I cannot find any images.
So, in the not too distant past, people did live without electricity. I am sure that some still do.
Addendum. In the early 20th century my grandfather went to the large island, Inishmore, to learn Irish. He brought his bicycle with him, the first ever on the island. He became known as fear an rothar, man of the bicycle.
Quite easily. My mother was raised on a farm in South Australia near the Victorian border in the 1920’s-30’s . They had no electricity at all.
No telephone. They boiled their linen in a copper using a wood fire. Used kerosene lamps and candles. She would read by candlelight. They had no refrigerator, so they stored food in their cellar. They had a coolgardie safe to keep things cool.
My grandmother was apparently a very good butcher. They got their school lessons by mail and by listening to “School of the air” once a week on their battery powered radio.
My mother told me that during summer she would listen to the radio to get the cricket scores, she would ride her horse out to the back paddock to update my grandfather on the scores while he worked.
A Coolgardie safe:
