Noob here. Question about off-grid systems and possible usage to lower electric bill.

[Philly4040]

I really appreciate any help I could get.
I have a typical residential house on 1/2 acre. Our electric bill is high. I want a "solar setup with batteries" that I can run off-grid that will lower my electric bill.
Would like to:
1) lower my electric bill/offset the cost of solar setup by running an air conditioner window unit.
2) have the ability in a power outage to divert this battery power away from the AC to a few appliances instead.
3) ideally this system would be able to operate the appliances and solar charge the batteries at the same time.
4) a system I can expand and eventually turn into grid tied.
5) I was interested in the enphase microinverters with battery storage because of some tree coverage in my area but was told this wasn't a viable option??

 

[Rednecktek]

Microinverters require grid connection which requires special equipment to get batteries involved, permitting, inspections, etc.

First thing to do is a power audit to figure out how much you'll need for battery capacity, wattage, and if you need 240v or can get aling with 120v. There's a great excel sheet in the Resources section where you can fill in the blanks and it'll figure out the math for you.

Next step is to figure out a budget and see if you can find an overlap there.

From there you can start planning a system and getting a sub panel installed to switch stuff over from grid to battery.

 

[Philly4040]

Thanks so much for your reply. My total budget will be around 3k annually each year until I'm happy with the setup.

 

[Daddy Tanuki]

Thanks so much for your reply. My total budget will be around 3k annually each year until I'm happy with the setup.

as I have no clue what your area is like legality wise, you need to ascertain that first. me I would build a small solar shed, and put my deep freeze and some other power eating items in it and make it totally standalone to avoid complications with the power company.

this will give you the experience you need going forward to design and plan a larger system, that might or might not need to be permitted.

you could use it as a primer per se learn all the lessons on a small system and expand from there. Since you are talking home use go straight to 48 volt systems.... that way the things you buy can be used later in your final system.

I started with a solar powered camper that had small fridge, small freezer and small a/c. Jumped form that to a solar shed that powered my heat tapes all winter to avoid frozen pipes and then in the summer powered both my home fridge and freezer along with my septic pump all via a honking big extension cord. the final jump was to power the entire cabin. by then all the items I had acquired for the solar "shed" were used in the final build so there was no loss involved. just a thought.

just my ¥2.8 worth of thoughts.