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Most home solar installations don't come with proper grid isolation and the inverters aren't designed to create a stable AC signal in the absence of a grid powe

• guntars 7y ago
  But they could, though, with a small increase in complexity and cost. People didn’t find it worthwhile because the grid in the US has been fantastically reliable, until now.
  • rtkwe 7y ago
    It's not really low cost, to truly do off grid solar you need to have a battery pack plus the isolator (so you don't fry the people trying to fix the system with back-fed current) and a true sine wave inverter which is pretty expensive. You have to have the battery pack because solar has a very harsh drop off in produced energy if you try to extract too much and that level moves around a lot as the light level on the cell changes. Because of this you have to have a reserve that can power the entire house by itself since a cloud can drop out 90% of the solar energy completely randomly.
• chaostheory 7y ago
  Yes, which is why I specifically mentioned Tesla. They can install both the solar roof and their powerwall batteries as a package. It isn’t cheap, but we can start solving this problem right now. The people I know who own it are pretty happy. In terms of long term cost, it’s more or less the same as buying power from a utility like PG&E... the only problem is the upfront cost unless you find a solar & battery company that still has a lease option