I'm in the US and would like to use solar even if the grid goes down while using a grid-tied system.
I'd like to get the cost savings of feeding the grid while the grid is up, but if the grid goes down I want to be able to use the solar to charge my batteries. I'm not concerned about a failover where there's no time delay between switching from grid to non-grid if the grid goes down. I could do that manually when needed. The main goal is to use my solar panels for whatever I want if the grid goes down.
The only way I can think of is to have a second charger/inverter where I manually take the wires that come from the solar panels and feed into the grid-tied inverter, and move them over to the non-grid tied charger/inverter. But this would be quite expensive.
Is there a way to do this without a second non-grid charger/inverter?
I'd like to get the cost savings of feeding the grid while the grid is up, but if the grid goes down I want to be able to use the solar to charge my batteries. I'm not concerned about a failover where there's no time delay between switching from grid to non-grid if the grid goes down. I could do that manually when needed. The main goal is to use my solar panels for whatever I want if the grid goes down.
The only way I can think of is to have a second charger/inverter where I manually take the wires that come from the solar panels and feed into the grid-tied inverter, and move them over to the non-grid tied charger/inverter. But this would be quite expensive.
Is there a way to do this without a second non-grid charger/inverter?