It’s nice to see this discussion here. Is anyone consider doing a solar install themselves? I suppose being technical and generally understanding all the main components, I was considering just doing a solar system for emergency power when we get power outages and maybe to power a few rooms around the house full time with a transfer switch or something. I was mostly just thinking about it so far with a few reads before finding this thread.

Most of the systems you read about on the web/youtube seem to be pretty small of course, but I suppose you could always spend a bit more to do something nicer and bigger. Looking at pricing, those nice 240W panels run $460/per according to the first google search I found and a 4000 Watt Inverter is 2.1k online.

I was planning to back it up with some deep cycle marine batteries so it would work if the grid lost power as well since I was hoping to still have power without the noise of a generator at night.

So anyone else thinking of doing something like that or maybe smaller scale with additional room for growth as needed? I wasn’t planning to stick the panels on my roof initially since I have no idea how to do that.

I was thinking of something like this:
http://www.wholesalesolar.com/backup/refrigeration-backup-power-system.html

Thanks so much for the web link as well. With a 30% tax credit, this would be pretty affordable to power a few things if you were more concerned with power outages.

I looked up our old power bills and we avg about $140/month now so not sure if a full solar system would be worth it financially, but definitely want an emergency solution.