Redneck Cowgirl, our place is entirely run by solar, and there are so many more variables to consider. There's all that math involved of all lights and appliances, computers, and it should be calculated to the shortest day of the year.
You have to find out what kind of wattage those freezers need. Chest freezers have to run 24/7, which means not only do you have to have enough panels to bring in power to bring the batteries completely full every day, but also to run the freezer, which probably comes on a minimum of 15 minutes an hour, which is 24 divided by 4 = 6 hours a day, for two freezers? You're going to need a refrigerator as well. You'll need lights and maybe a microwave, a coffee maker, computers? water pump? printer? TV screen? That's a lot of demand, especially on the shortest day of the year. You're going to need a lot....lot of panels, 10 or more 250 watt panels? to run two freezers in addition to everything else. And they can't be that far away from the house because they need to be accessible and cleaned, and power can't travel long distances without losing some of it, and you want to minimize that as much as possible. So where you put them is crucial so they get sun on them as early in the morning as possible, and it has to stay on them all day, particularly in winter. They all need special frames to be mounted on, linked together properly and protected from mice and rats and insects chewing on them.
We have a 3/4 size refrigerator on a timer so it only comes on every other hour, and if there's cloudy days we have to take steps to make sure things are turned off until the batteries are full again. I try not to have anything frozen, it just uses too much from the batteries as far as I'm concerned. Even using the vacuum for an hour, which is easy to do in a rural place with bugs and stuff tracked in, takes the batteries down a lot. I run the vacuum on the generator.
The batteries should not be taken below half full, or they won't last as long as they are supposed to. That means if you have a deep cycle battery with 300 watt hours on it, you really should only use 150 of those every day. That sounds like a lot, but it's not really. We try to avoid having anything on continuously, that means all little boxes on the ends of electric cords that are using power continuously are connected to power strips that are turned off, particularly all night.
Solar is not cheaper power, batteries are very expensive and they need attention to get the full life out of them. The system needs maintenance to make sure the connections to the batteries don't corrode and the batteries don't get charged. They need distilled water, that has to be checked often because that is what's holding the power in there, the electrolyte fluid. The more it's used, the more the distilled water needs replacing. The batteries need their own shed because they off-gas acid which eats everything up, especially little wires and boards inside the controller and inverter. The controller that tells you what the voltage is, is crucial, not just a cheap one with blinking lights that tells you nothing specific, especially if you are running a whole house. I am aware every day of how the weather is affecting my system and just how much of it I can use. It's not really something you can plunk into place and expect it to do what a house on a huge electrical grid will do.
So how do they set up? I know that the panels charge batteries, but then what happens?
