Thinking of getting a small solar system - panels, battery and inverter. I keep getting ads on my phone for 4patriots unit but with just a small amount of googling it looks overpriced and the point zero titan looks like a better deal. Thinking a small system like this would be good for emergency power at home and could also be used in the RV. Although the RV may have similar parts except the solar panels. Anyone else have these type systems?
Solar works really well for RVs because their "secondary" power is 12V.. Essentially you already have the battery bank. 200 watts of solar pretty much covers our truck camper UNLESS it's cold out and we run the furnace (high 12v draw).
If you want to do this for a house, you're going to need to invert the power. I assume you're talking about a stand-alone setup where you use an extension and plug in the appliances / whatever you're going to power in the house, versus trying to integrate it as a backup (via a transfer switch).
Deal is that it takes a LOT of solar panels to make substantial power. And even then, you need to store that power somewhere (typically large battery banks). Solar, assuming it's a sunny day, maybe 8 hours of power and only a few of those hours are at peak capacity. So for me, I might have a full 6KW of power for 2-3 hour max. That systems is 20 panels. It's simply much cheaper and much more reliable to have a standby generator (even portable) and keep a fuel source around for it.. Like a 100lb propane tank. IMHO anyway.
It comes down to what use case you're trying to cover. Many natural disasters where power is out are associated with bad weather (IE no sun) - so that's another disadvantage of solar.
