What’s battery life (as in years to replacement?) I use a lot of batteries of all chemistries for a lot of things (no cars or house-capacity solar installs tho’), and I’m a lot more careful than most people about charge cycles, using good chargers, and so on (my wife thinks I’m a nut about it): I’m still not happy about the reliability of how many charge / discharge cycles I get. Even within a good brand, model and size, I find some batteries will make their charge cycles rating, and some won’t, with fairly substantial percentages of severe failure (high internal resistance, capacity drops to under 50% of rating, or complete failure / won’t charge).
Then the 2nd question is backup time off the batteries - where you’d have a major advantage over me (warmer winters — our biggest threat of outages over 24 hours is ice storms, which often come with significant sleet, too.)
I’m still considering solar as the roof needs replacement — normally I’d do most of the work myself. My SE exposure is terrible (big trees that provide a lot of cooling shade in summer) but my SW exposure is pretty good. Our “practical” (and larger) roof section faces WNW.
Where I’d come up with the $$ is a huge problem, tho’, and I’m ethically opposed to gov’t subsidies of this sort.
I'd be skeptical of getting solar if you live up north, say maybe further north than Kentucky. My solar works really well for me in north/central Alabama. My extended family in New England and Canada want to replicate it and I tell them it'd be a waste of money for them. For whole-house backup purposes they'd be better off getting a dual-fueled generator and a propane tank (but burn gasoline if they can get their hands on it for running the generator cheaper).
Where I’d come up with the $$ is a huge problem, tho’, and I’m ethically opposed to gov’t subsidies of this sort.
I used a HELOC to pay for my solar and other energy improvements. But interest rates have now gone up and that might not be worth it. As far as government subsides, I took the solar tax credit just like I take any other tax credits even though I advocate for a flat tax. Until I win the argument and get a flat tax I'll unashamedly take whatever tax credits/debits I can. They don't help us consumers, though. All the tax credits do is artificially inflate the solar costs just like other subsidies raise other cost (i.e. college tuition, medical costs).
Ok ...
My advice is if you live north of the 40th parallel you should buy a large and good quality multi-fuel PURE sine wave generator (Kohler or Generac) and also a smaller pure sine wave portable multi fuel generator.
Above the 40th only the government and virtue-signalling folks will throw away THAT much money on panels generate enough real world power from October-March.
Your panels would HAVE to face south and have a 40-45° incline. A large ground-mount panel set would work, and you might even have to employ the commercial motorized frames to maximize production.
Just. No. Unless ya got money to burn, or you just WANT to have a fuel-free power source and like the resilience of having solar as a secondary or tertiary backup.
We originally went the whole house generator route on a prior home. All in it was about $24k for the permits, concrete pad, new wiring in an existing house, transfer/isolation switch and upgrades to the breaker panel, and the generator as well. That’s a lot cheaper than our 34 panel, 10kW, 10 kWh Enphase battery and various controllers. That was roughly $80K list, then subtract the 24% investment tax credit.
The downside of generators is three-fold: (1) it was a $22K sunk cost we seldom used, and had a full on high- negative ROI. It’s only value was resilience. With solar you get value every day of sunshine because it reduces the power you buy from your utility. (2) despite their claims of being quiet, the noise is intrusive and annoying. Plus everyone knows you’re on generator power. (3) Along with that noise you are consuming fuel you have to have on hand and replenish, and if liquid has a shelf life you need to manage to.
About batteries. I $pent a good bit of money on hobbyist solar projects on the property and learned the expen$I’ve way to invest in good panels, charge controllers, and inverters. But batteries?? That’s a whole different level of ways to $pend money. One even exploded in my (outoor) Battery enclosure after the charge controller malfunctioned.
Net: screw it, our whole house solar battery is from Enphase, as are all the solar controllers and micro inverters on the panels. Enphase guarantees 90% capacity at 15 years. Also the electronics have a 25 year warranty from Enphase. Nothing. Ever. Breaks.
In 15 years, maybe 20 when my adult children replace the battery, it’ll be twice the power at half the cost.
Truth; by going 100% Enphase, all the usual gremlins are behind me. Co$t more, but it’s trouble-free.