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Originally Posted by weishaupt1776

thanks bogeyman. Sounds like you got this down.

In simple terms, how would the solar stuff work?

So you've got the panels, an inverter, & batteries, right?

So the panels hook up to the batteries, but what does the inverter do?

Also, where do you hook up everything to?

The inverter is used to "convert" from the Direct Current (DC =) provided by the batteries (that store the energy gathered from the sun by the solar panels) into Alternate Current (AC ~) which is what everything uses inside your house, the TV, VCR, fridge, stove (for electric ones of course), etc., you name it.

Most major electric appliances and electrodomestic equipment is rated to function using 120 Volts AC (except for small equipments that provide an AC/DC converter or sometimes it is just an AC/AC converter except it provides a smaller voltage rather than the 120 V AC, it may provide 12 V AC or 12 V DC or 5 V AC or 5 V DC, etc.), internally the TVs and all that will conver the 120 V AC input into several different sources of smaller DC voltages but everything is designed and equiped to work with a 120 Volts AC input. For industrial stuff you have other voltage levels like 220 V AC or sometimes even 440 V AC and also they use what is called bi-phase or tri-phase as opossed to a home which is a single phase (this means just one pair of electrical cables coming into your house from the grid).

By using the inverter (it "inverts" from DC to AC DC/AC) you can use everything in a normal way just like if you are using the normal grid.

I think you would hook it up in the same connections points where the cables from the grid come into your house, the main entry to your home where the breakers are that would provide the power in all the outlets and switches just like the normal grid would do.