All of the labor has been DIY, and I've got about $9,000 invested in the system components.

Back of the napkin math, at current electric rates, puts my ROI at just under 9 years. If electric rates keep going up, it'll pay back even faster.

Edit: Depending on how you look at it, ROI could be in as few as 1.5 to 2 years. This system is in lieu of a whole house generator that would have cost us about $7,000. Had we gone with that instead, it would never have paid for itself (other than peace of mind) and we would have been perfectly content. So if I'm only considering the price difference between this and the generator, it'd only have to pay back $2,000.

A hobby pays itself just by enjoying it. I've never calculated how long it will take to pay off my gaming rig

If you enjoy it, it already has.

I'm more of a hands-on learner but that can get expensive depending on the hobby haha. For going solar, I'm still very much in progress but definitely on the path to where i want to be.

Basically the first step is to decide what your goal is. Do you want to go totally off grid? Just reduce your electric bill? Have backup power? All/some of the above?

If you only want to reduce your bill, check into what's called grid-tied or "balcony solar". That's the easiest to get started with, but it requires cooperation from the electric company since you're feeding back into the grid. I can't do that here, so I went with a standalone/battery-based system.

Once you identify your goal(s), you'll need to figure out what your "base" load is, and then how much your peak loads are so you know what size system to shoot for. Then you'll need to choose an inverter that can meet those with some extra capacity for unforeseen spikes. I started with a 10KW system, but it's also expandable up to 60 KW( 6 units in parallel). My house only has 100A service, so two inverters would actually give me more power than I can currently get from the power company lol.

For the panels, you can really only expect to get 60-80% of their rated output most of the time. The rated output is under perfect alignment with the sun, at the perfect angle, and with absolutely no obstructions. In practice, you'll never see that. As an example, I usually only get between 3 and 3.4 KW out of my 4 KW system on the best of days. This is normal.

For batteries, they're technically optional depending on your goals. If you just want to shave some money off your electric bill, you can forego the batteries and the inverters will happily mix PV and utility to power your loads during the day. e.g. If you're drawing 1,000 watts and only getting 900 watts from PV, then it'll make up the missing 100 watts from utility power.

I sized my batteries based on my average daily usage plus an extra 10 KWh. We use about 20 KWh per day, so I got two 16 KWh batteries for a total of 32 KWh. That means, if there's no (usable) sunshine at all and we lose power, I can run the whole house for a little over a full day. Any sun hitting the panels will reduce the current draw from the batteries while also charging them if we use less than the PV is producing.

The longest power outage we had was about 29 hours, but if we typically experienced multi-day outages, I might have gone for a larger battery.

I had a much longer reply written up, but it barely scratched the surface. So hope this helps in a general sense but happy to answer any specific questions if I can.

For heating, I've been wanting to try a solar collector. Not sure if you've come across Greenhill Forge on YouTube or anywhere that covers his projects, but he does all sorts of off-grid stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cPuVZjnbi4

That's where he builds and tests several different styles of solar collectors for solar heating. The collectors are pretty inexpensive to build so that may be an option if you just want to (help) keep a shed warm.

Check back in 2-3 years when I (hope to) get an EV. I'm sure I'll be crowing about it then 😆

In the mean time, would you like to hear about my solar powered lawn mower?

Could setup a solar powered desalination plant to water your garden too

The usable south-facing roof area is full, unfortunately. I'll have to do ground mount in the back yard and run a bunch of conduit if I want to add any more PV.

The 32 kWh of batteries are made of two 16 kWh batteries in parallel. Since this system is in lieu of a backup generator, I have it configured to only draw the batteries down to 50%. That leaves the bottom 16 kWH available for emergency use. Basically, for day to day usage, I treat the battery as being half the capacity it really is.

I've only been running this system for about 3 weeks now, but the batteries have been operating between 65% and 90% pretty consistently even running the A/C pretty heavily. They've been closer to low 60s this past week, but the wildfire smoke was choking out the sunlight Thursday and Friday.

Lol, def can become an obsession. First hand experience there.

I've wanted a whole house PV system for a long time, and this is just me finally getting around to making it happen. SO and I were talking about getting a backup generator installed, but that would have been about $7,000 for something that would only get used two or three times a year since our power doesn't go out often (we have no heat or ability to cook when the power goes out, and it's always in the dead of winter when we lose power). The PV system I sketched out was about $9.000, but in addition to covering us during outages, we could use it daily to reduce electric bill so, unlike the generator, this would pay for itself over time.

SO finally came around to my way of thinking, so here we are lol. My limiting factor is usable roof area. Of the roof that's south facing, only about 14x20 feet of it is suitable for mounting panels. There's a west-facing gable, but it's blocked most of the time by a tree. The east-facing side of the gable is available, but it's pretty much always foggy in the mornings here, so it wouldn't add much to the system.

Unless I build a ground mount setup in the back yard, we're pretty much at the limit of how many panels I can buy. I'm kind of glad for that because otherwise I'd just keep buying them.

Instead of looking at number of panels, look at the total wattage. How many watts does it take to charge your power station? 30W-100W portable solar panels like these should work well for that. You could even go a little higher than what you need because of things like inline charging and dual charging, so you can charge multiple devices at once and still keep the power station topped off. That's a good starting point.

Next, ask yourself how much wattage you could regularly use it for on a normal day. Ignore high-wattage appliances at first, like refrigerators, a/c, heater, stove, coffee pot, hairdryer, etc. Basically anything that produces high temperatures or has a motor a motor. But what else could you power on it? Chargers, homelab, router, etc.? There's your second expansion. Probably some larger one-off panels and a couple power stations

Lastly, ask yourself what wattage you would need to run all your necessities in the case of an emergency with a long-term power outage. That's when you calculate the high-wattage appliances. This will probably require a full rooftop solar installation.

So no need to dive all the way in at first if you can't afford to yet, but don't let that discourage you from getting some smaller panels to start.

ew socialism

also not the Highlander 2: The Quickening version where they blacked out the sky to stop global warming

don’t charge devices directly from solar power

Unless your power bank has a built in charge controller, this should also include your power bank. At its core, a power bank is nothing more than a big ass lithium ion (or maybe potassium ion, if it's newer) battery, just like the one in any other device.

The prepper will likely be camped and there will be signs someone's been in the area recently, the looter or looters would have a pretty big advantage.

Well, I keep it fresh by urinating on it. I collect all my family's urine in a bathtub so we can have an extra sanitary bath once a week, together, and then I dump the leftover on the pile with this big crane I rigged up outta grocery carts.

If you weren't using your Steam Deck all-out during the day then probably. Steam Decks draw about 29W max (the LCD models I have at least).

There is value in decentralization and redundancy though.

Have you ever carried a backpack full of books? They're heavy af. Probably easier to just take over the library and move everything else there.

A standard E-Book can store the entire Wikipedia, OSM DB, Wikisource and Wikibook contents on a single $4 128 GB (~1 million books) SD card, also having a good IPX8 waterproof class.

Paper books are fucking HEAVY and bulky. They're only practical if you don't ever need to take more than one or two anywhere. If you gotta be on the move, the extra equipment to manage the battery is much lighter than the books you would need to carry otherwise.

Another advantage to an e-reader is that I can remove the battery and it's completely waterproof, as long I completely dry it before the battery goes back in, it can get as wet as I need it to, no problem. Books don't have that option.

I like e-reader for a camping setup since it is lightweight. You can also do a little cyber deck build and load up all of wikipedia.

Mildew