[turtle]

Here is an interesting find: most power companies limit you rom being grid connected with greater than 20kWh production from PV. Why? It doesn't really make any sense to have that limit. I encountered this with Dominion in Va and now seeing it will Duke.

I'm glad true sine wave inverters were mentioned. I ensure my battery backups have that, but didn't think about the house as a whole. That is critical as far as I'm concerned. While I'd love to have redundancy I don't know that that would make the budget. The risk doesn't seem to justify the expense in this case. Of course, that depends on how this ends up shaping up and when if Mrs T and I move forward with this.

It is pretty amazing the products out there. So many are really rated well. There are tons of products for smaller builds that would easily fit someone like Paul's 400sq. ft. space. Going for something for my family though... Yeah, this isn't going to be cheap.

If I look purely at cost my current rate is $.11 a kWh, if it goes up to $.13 kWh it would be a sizable bill increase for us. That increase wouldn't effect me if I'm off-grid. I'm trying to avoid financial specifics since this thread isn't really about personal finances but rather the technology for living with PV energy and potentially even off-grid for a "normal" house as opposed to a cabin in the woods.

Of course, there is always the fact that we would be reducing carbon footprint and all the other eco buzzwords about how I'd be saving the planet. I do want to be a good steward no matter if I'm on the grid or off, so that does kinda play in.