I have been involved in solar for a long time now. I have a 4Kwh grid tied solar system consisting of 14- 285 watt solar panel with Enphase micro inverter through the Enphase combiner system. I have somewhere between $25 and $50 electric bills.
I am preparing to pick up an inverter and cables so if we end up in a grid down situation I can at least have a daytime/sunny day supply of power, IF we get out of this crown situation.
I got my equipment from wholesale solar. Great people, great pricing. If you say “I can’t hook that up” then your right, you can’t. Can’t ain’t in my vocabulary.
God Bless y’all and be safe. 😃🐴🐎🐓
If you can, you should add a Shunt from your charge controller and install a backup Battery Bank. In a conventional grid-tied Solar System, you only benefit when the grid is up and running in that your electricity Bill is lowered. If there is an outage that affects your neighborhood, YOUR house is as dark as everyone else's and the Solar on your roof is doing no good for nobody-AND YOU STILL HAVE TO MAKE THE PAYMENTS!
My Sister and her Husband went that way, and they are now $40K UPSIDE DOWN on their Mortgage. When they were talking about going grid-Tie, I BEGGED them not to do it! I have Solar on my House as a stop-gap. Its not enough to run my entire place, but it DOES give us lights and communications when the power goes out.
It also is enough to power our Home Entertainment System. I also use it to run ALL of our portable devices-in the house, in our cars, and in the Bush. When my wife retires the end of this year, we intend to move. Our present Solar Array is only 560 Watts, but it has made a noticeable difference in our Electric Bill, and we have NEVER been completely dark in an outage since it was installed.
We ALSO heat with Kerosene OFF GRID, so when the Ice Storm hit US, we were warm, lit up, and had hot meals through the entire event. Had to scrape the Array a couple of tiimes, but it has proven its worth MANY times since we got it!
Addendum:
When we DO get into our next place, I intend to put up a 3-5 KW Array, A SIX KILOWATT HOUR Lithium Iron Phosphate Battery Bank, and SELL power to the Local Utility. I want those Bastards to pay ME for a change!