Being honest, today the situation is far from ideal.
I have 4 panels of 280W, with total generation potential in the 1kW range, but because I initially underestimated the wind force, my structure didn’t hold up in a particularly strong windstorm last year and the panels flew off, breaking the glass on two of them, thus impairing their generation. I don’t have active monitoring, but I occasionally check on them to see how the generation is going and the maximum I’ve seen them reach was around 720W.
My battery bank consists of 4 Freedom DF-1000 lead-acid batteries of 60Ah 12V, connected in parallel and series to achieve a total of 120Ah and 24V. Total of 2880W, considering the battery’s ideal discharge rate at C20, this gives me a capacity of 144W/h well below my average consumption of 255W/h. This is a problem. With such an aggressive discharge rate I ended up degrading the batteries quite quickly. In practice today a full battery charge gives me 2 hours of maximum continuous use, about 4 hours of internet, or a whole night with just the lighting in use, with all other equipment turned off.
Autumn and winter are complicated, during this time I have little effective sun coverage, usually only receiving direct sun between 09:00 and 16:00. Naturally it’s a season with shorter days, and it doesn’t help that the sun’s position at this time goes behind a hill, leaving me in shadow from 16:00, so even having daylight, it’s not direct light, not charging the batteries.
In summer I don’t have as many problems, the sun rises as early as 05:45 and at its peak sets after 18:30. Easily covering business hours, when I most need energy for the laptop due to my work. Having internet until 20:00, and just lights for the rest of the night.
For emergencies and consecutive rainy days I have a gasoline generator, which I changed the carburetor to also accept natural gas, so I have a gas cylinder connected to it increasing its autonomy from 4 hours to over 20 hours. And when everything runs out, a good stock of candles.
Additional equipment
Charge controller
I have 2 generic 60A MPPT charge controllers - oversized to support future expansion. Today I use only one of them and the other is a backup.
Inverter
I use an Epever Sine Wave 1500W 24V/220V inverter (IP1500-22), also oversized for my current consumption of about 255Wh As backup, I have another Epever 500W 12V/220V inverter. Breakdown of my energy consumption
Current maximum consumption (work mode)
-starlink: 55W -lighting: 20W -phone charger: 33W -laptop charger: 145W
Total: 253W
Current basic consumption (mobile internet mode)
-starlink: 55W -lighting: 20W -phone charger: 33W
Total: 108W