For solar power, is there something like going half-off-the grid?

Post date: 2018-04-20 09:48:18
Views: 92
Nobody really talks about rigging a house for just a bit of solar energy.

Living in Puerto Rico where sunshine is no problem. A on-line calculator has my city about comparable to Phoenix, AZ in terms of kWh/m^2/day

I don't have the money to plunge $10+K dollars into a solar powered house. On the other hand, I see multi-piece solar kits that seem to have everything: except for a lot of power.
Here's one in the $3K to $4K range.
Here's one much less capable in the under $2K range.

Is it possible and reasonably straightforward to rig up one room with solar powering with this sort of kit? Enough energy to run fans, computers, a television and VCR, let's say three devices at a time from one heavy duty extension cord.

I'm asking because after the Puerto Rican grid went down yesterday, and having used my propane portable generator for the first time, I realize what a hassle it will be to use for an extended outage.

If I can fix up one room that can function, that may be better than chasing down propane, worrying that thieves will steal it from our front lawn at night, (We locked it up but it is so loud that we would never hear a thief until they cut the motor), running out of propane in the middle of everything, only having one room's worth of power, anyway, etc.

I figure when there is not an outage we could use the incoming electricity to reduce our electric bill by running appliances in the single room.

I recognize that air conditioners, refrigerators and some appliances require a lot of energy, and I'm not planning on putting those on the solar grid. My roofing has a good angle to catch the sun, and it has an easy way to run the wiring down to the garage where the inverter and batteries would be.

I'm handy enough to do most of what I imagine the installation will be.
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