I've been reading the forums for a couple of weeks, so I didn't come in here and ask the most obviously answered questions a million times over. But...I still might do it accidentally. 
I live in central VA and have had a couple of strings of panels on my roof for about 10 years now (~6.4 KW). I have that era of a commensurate Sunny Boy inverter. In the best case, I produce 30-40% of my energy needs a day. We have net metering here (straight offset), no TOU pricing. So, there's not much return to be had by adding battery based storage. Outages typically last a few hours 2-3 times a year. Winter and summer storms can produce 3-4 day outages, though they don't happen often.
For outages currently, I have a subpanel containing circuits I can run off my gasoline generator (8kw continuous) that I plug into a L14-30R in the garage. Panel and subpanel are in the basement on the other side of the house. Subpanel contains a few lights & outlets, septic pump, septic alarm, and well pump. Everything works fine, but I hate keeping fresh gas, maintaining the genny, periodic startup/running, and finally getting it out and using it when our typical outage is a few hours. Oh, and the noise for longer periods.
So, I want to eliminate it. Two options are: 1) replace Sunny Boy with grid tied AIO and a small amount of battery storage, and 2) build "hand cart" portable system that plugs into the L14-30R. In either case, the batteries won't be called on very much unless I designed them to be responsible for some load in option #1. I realize this system will likely start out by only covering the short outage case. #2 option is attractive because I can probably do it myself.
What are the ramifications of not cycling the battery very regularly? How do folks who have tried option #2 keep their batteries "healthy"? Is there some other reasonable option that I'm not thinking of?
I'm sure that I've missed something but appreciate all your thoughts.
I live in central VA and have had a couple of strings of panels on my roof for about 10 years now (~6.4 KW). I have that era of a commensurate Sunny Boy inverter. In the best case, I produce 30-40% of my energy needs a day. We have net metering here (straight offset), no TOU pricing. So, there's not much return to be had by adding battery based storage. Outages typically last a few hours 2-3 times a year. Winter and summer storms can produce 3-4 day outages, though they don't happen often.
For outages currently, I have a subpanel containing circuits I can run off my gasoline generator (8kw continuous) that I plug into a L14-30R in the garage. Panel and subpanel are in the basement on the other side of the house. Subpanel contains a few lights & outlets, septic pump, septic alarm, and well pump. Everything works fine, but I hate keeping fresh gas, maintaining the genny, periodic startup/running, and finally getting it out and using it when our typical outage is a few hours. Oh, and the noise for longer periods.
So, I want to eliminate it. Two options are: 1) replace Sunny Boy with grid tied AIO and a small amount of battery storage, and 2) build "hand cart" portable system that plugs into the L14-30R. In either case, the batteries won't be called on very much unless I designed them to be responsible for some load in option #1. I realize this system will likely start out by only covering the short outage case. #2 option is attractive because I can probably do it myself.
What are the ramifications of not cycling the battery very regularly? How do folks who have tried option #2 keep their batteries "healthy"? Is there some other reasonable option that I'm not thinking of?
I'm sure that I've missed something but appreciate all your thoughts.
