I looked into solar panel quotes for our roof and they seem reasonable, but the problem is we have a double-shingled roof (courtesy of the previous owner), so it sounds like we can't add the weight of panels to that, and some roofers we trust said those shingles have 10 years of life left on them, so it doesn't really make sense to replace them yet, either.
So it seems we're stuck on that front, but I still really want to cut down on our energy emissions where I can, so I've been researching and watching videos about "solar generators," which are really giant batteries that can be powered by solar panels. Seems to be a good time to get into it, with the way more convenient lithium ion batteries starting to become cost competitive with the old lead kind. I was thinking about starting with a fairly cheap one, like a
Rockpals 300 and getting a 100W panel, to get used to the logistics of how much power I actually get from it and see what i can run from it, like a computer and phones or whatnot, and then if I like how that's going invest in something bigger like an
Apex (1500W output, up to 500W panel input) and try to run part of the house on it, like maybe some kitchen appliances or something, maybe run some wires inside the house or something...?
Does this sound reasonable... or totally crazy? I know the ROI through generators is gonna be way less than roof panels, which is why most people just use these for camping or actual off-grid scenarios, but I don't really care about the ROI... we aggressively paid off the house and now I'd like to use some of our extra cashflow towards our values of reducing emissions, even if it's slightly, um... unconventional? The Holy Grail would be to get a plug-in hybrid down the road and charge that from the panels+generator, even though I figure that'd be super inefficient (charge one battery to charge another?) and I'm not even sure if the Apex is big enough to handle that (it's hard to tell from my research but its max sounds uncomfortably close to the numbers I'm finding). I'm also not sure at what point, as you start dealing with larger power flows, you start running into potential safety issues as a DIY knucklehead.
Basically, if it's not feasible to spend ~10K on roof panels right now I figure I might as well spend a couple K on smaller stuff to play around and have fun and get experience with solar power and actually generate some clean energy for
something, maybe even several things... Just wondering if anyone's tried to use "off-grid" stuff in an urban setting like this before or if you have any suggestions / recommendations / cautions / warnings.... :)