"It also gives you a national home and business redundancy when you have massive storms and the like. Indeed - a place could survive quite happily for many many days on a full battery if cut off from power and the home went into essential only mode."
That would be great if it could be accomplished. My PV system needs mains power to stay up. If the mains go out the whole lot goes down
much to my chagrin. I'm told that's to save anyone doing repairs on the mains from getting fried by my power and if I want the equivalent of a big UPS, I have to go off-grid. Don't get me wrong, I am very happy with my system and currently saving around $1500 per year. Maybe I need an auto switch to cut to a separate small power source to keep every thing up. FWIW I have 18 panels and three 1.2kW batteries. If the wife doesn't fire up the oven for dinner the batteries keep the place going all night supporting 3 fridges. I figure if I had put a fourth battery in, it would be perfect. I'm holding off doing that so that I can stagger the battery age to allow for a more gradual replacement.
