Hi Guys,
I've addressed this before here so please excuse my redundancy. I'm sort of a prepper myself and my original thoughts, ten or so years ago, were that I would go autonomous and completely turn off the grid. After living with PV, off and on grid, I've modified my original thinking.
The best solution is to have an off grid/intertie system. This way the grid keeps your batteries charged an when the grid fails the batteries take over and run your house. You get to sell energy back and still have fully charged batteries when you need them and even LA batts can last a very long time.
With that said, if you still want to go completely off grid you will need more than just PV because batteries, regardless what kind, simply won't cut it. I have about 10Kw's of PV, this summer (hopefully!) I'm putting in wind and micro hydro.
You have to look at your land in its entirety and extract every bit of power you can from it. If you live on a 100 x 100 lot you're not going to make the power you need and your best option is the off grid/ intertie system. I can tell you this after building battery boxes, an off grid only system and an off grid/intertie system. And I have 16 acres with a stream and good wind I've monitored for several years.
Wind compliments PV and microhydro trumps them both ( sorry for the trump word!). Microhydro is the best because you get power 24/7 and your batteries only come into play for surges like motor starts. Even if the stream doesn't provide all the power you'll need it will get a boost from PV and wind if you calculate your system right.
That's the way you have to figure and look at it. Land is power, we've forgotten that with the advent of fossil fuel but, as most of you know, fossil fuel is not our friend!
Rob
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