Do you have any technical info on your system, such as how many watts are generated with midday sunlight, and how many watt-hours of battery storage you have?
I'm embarrassed to admit that I'd have to dig out my owner's manual to give you any technical specs. (EDIT: Here's my system:
http://www.mobilesolarpower.net/ms_series/ms-325/ ) As to the watts, I knew back when I got the system, but that's been like eight years now, and I've forgotten everything technical and become accustomed to judging by the readouts. Amber lights on the converters means I'm low on power; when the Outback system reads 32 (and no, I don't know 32
what,) I'm pulling in a decent amount of power. 17 kinda sucks. My water pressurizer, when it's on, pulls something like 20, which often means the system has to pull from its battery to run it.
This is actually a very small system, especially considering that my house is pretty big. My stove and water heater run off propane, and I have a propane tank on one side of the property. I designed the house for passive heating and cooling, and I'm happy to say that I got that part right; the house is always at least 10 degrees cooler than outside in the summer and 10 degrees warmer than outside in the winter - without using any sort of internal heating and cooling system. But in the summer, I open the windows at night and run low-energy ceiling fans constantly, keeping it even cooler, and in the winter, I have a wood-burning stove to boost the heat.
I do not have a dryer or dishwasher or blow dryer, or any other high-energy use appliances. Basically, nothing that uses electricity to produce heat or that uses more water than absolutely necessary.
And speaking of water, I use water catchment for all our drinking water - it flows off our roof, through the gutter, and into a cistern; we pull it out in a bucket then run it through a Berkey filter.
We do not run a TV constantly - only when we really want to watch a movie or play a game. And our batteries are not as efficient as they once were. We used to be able to go three days without sun without having to change our normal routines at all; now, we last two days without sun if we're careful. We do have a backup generator, but we use it as seldom as possible.
We are going to end up tying to the grid in a year or so, at least until we can afford new batteries and maybe another panel or two.
But I love our little system. When everyone else is having power outages, they come to my place. And to me, the little sacrifices are worth the environmental good and the fact that we have no water or electric bills - only five or ten bucks in gas per month IF we end up running the generator, which we don't always. We could have gotten a much larger system if I hadn't bought one "turn key," already completely put together and needing only to be plugged in, out of a company in California (transporting it from California to Texas was kinda costly. Oh, and the company name is
Mobile Solar. They're great to work with, and do over-the-phone trouble shooting no matter how many years it's been since you bought your system.)
If I'd understood what I was doing, or if the companies in San Antonio hadn't been too damned stuck-up to come do a needs assessment and hook me up, I could now run more stuff. But oh well. I'm happy anyway.
This is our house:
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.127270280642422.9606.100000783513442&type=3
Looks like I don't have a facebook photo of my solar generator, but you can just barely see it in the background of this pic of my daughter:
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?f...82268210.63085.100000783513442&type=3&theater It's white and has a little shed next to it for the gas generator, for the times when it's necessary. You can see the nearest panel if you look reeeeal hard, it's at an angle near the top of my daughter's head on the left side of the photo (right in the fork of the tree branch.) On the other side of my daughter's head, that bit of grey is one of our two cisterns; this one's where the well water is stored, not the rain catchment one.
