Solar, figured out
The short version
Pick where you need power. A few taps later you'll have the exact setup, why it's right, and where to get it.
Off-grid home
Full-time, no power line
Backup for my house
Keep the lights on when the grid goes out
Tiny house
Full-time in a small space
Cabin or shed
Weekends, workshop, barn
RV, bus or skoolie
Bigger rigs with room on the roof
Van
Camper vans, life on the road
Just emergencies or camping
Outages, tailgates, weekends away — a smaller, portable setup
How many batteries do you need?
Gear
- A LiFePO4 power station — Battery, charger and outlets in one box you can carry. EcoFlow, Anker SOLIX and Bluetti are what most peopl...
- Any name-brand 400-watt panel — Panels are all about the same now. Buy the best price per watt from a real distributor, often by the pallet.
- Battle Born 100Ah — The 12-volt lithium battery that made lithium normal in vans. US-made, US support, and a warranty people ha...
- EG4 12000XP — The bigger all-in-one off-grid inverter: runs 120 and 240 volts, so it handles well pumps and heat pumps.
- EG4 6000XP — The smaller all-in-one off-grid inverter for tiny houses and cabins that run on normal 120-volt outlets.
- EG4 LifePower4 — The home battery most DIY off-grid systems run. About 5 kWh each, stacks in a rack, lasts well over ten yea...
- EG4 hybrid inverter — Works with your grid day to day, then takes over by itself when the power goes out.
- Victron MultiPlus-II — The inverter-charger in almost every serious van and boat build: outlets from your batteries, charging from...
Plan for what worries you
- Where to start prepping: water and food, then power, then shelterStart with water and food for a few days, then two weeks, then power to keep water flowing and food cold, then shelter. Each step covers far more real outages than the last, until about three months, when storing more stops paying off.
- A long power outage: winter storms and ice stormsPlan for about four days without power, and two weeks if ice storms reach you. That's how long the worst recent US winter outages lasted.
- When the grid goes down for monthsIt has happened in the US: after Hurricane Maria, most of Puerto Rico had no power for months, and the last neighborhood waited 328 days. What kept people going was local power, water and medicine, not stockpiles alone.
- A solar flare that takes down the gridA Carrington-class solar storm wouldn't fry your phone or your panels. It threatens the big transformers on the grid, and Lloyd's estimated 20 to 40 million Americans could be without power for weeks to a year or two.
- An EMP: what it would do, and will your solar survive?Solar panels survived a strong simulated EMP in Sandia's tests. The weak points are long wires: the grid, and the cables into your inverter. Keep spares wrapped, and power that doesn't depend on the grid.
- Hurricane power outages: how long, and what keeps you goingMost homes get power back within days of a hurricane, but the hard-hit ones wait weeks. After Beryl in 2024, heat killed more people than the wind. In September, solar refills a battery fast once the clouds clear.
- If Yellowstone erupts: ash, a dimmer sun, and your powerA Yellowstone super-eruption is very unlikely (USGS puts it near 1 in 730,000 a year) and would come with warning. If it happened, the threats to your power far away are wet ash shorting power lines, ash on your panels, and a dimmer sun for a year or two.
- The Cascadia earthquake: power for months, not daysOregon's own plan expects electricity to take 1 to 3 months to come back in the Willamette Valley and 3 to 6 months on the coast after a full Cascadia earthquake. Two weeks of supplies is the floor, not the goal.
- A nuclear attack: what the official guidance says to doGet inside, stay inside, stay tuned. Federal guidance is to shelter in the most protective building nearby for at least 12 to 24 hours, because fallout radiation drops fast: every seven-fold increase in time cuts it about ten-fold.
Answers
- 12V vs 24V vs 48V: which solar voltage do you need?
- Can lithium solar batteries handle cold weather?
- Does solar work during a power outage?
- Everything you need to buy for an off-grid solar system
- Fewer big solar panels or more small ones?
- Home biogas digesters: cooking gas from scraps, not electricity
- How much does an off-grid solar system cost?
- How much electricity do you use? (The one number that sizes solar)
- Inverter vs inverter-charger: what's the difference?
- LiFePO4 vs lead-acid for solar: which battery should you buy?
- MPPT vs PWM charge controllers: which do you need?
- Micro-hydro power: is your creek worth more than solar?
- Power station vs generator vs home solar for outages
- Ram pumps: move water uphill with no power at all
- Server-rack batteries, explained
- Small wind turbines for off-grid: worth it, or not?
- Solar glossary: every term, in plain English
- What are peak sun hours? (And why winter is the number that matters)
- What is a solar array?
- What not to buy for off-grid solar (and why it's everywhere)
- What size solar panel do you need for a van or RV?
- Winter storm power outage prep: what you actually need
- kW vs kWh: the only electricity lesson you need