This is really cool thanks for posting. I had a similar experience with our little solar setup. During covid my then 14 yr old son and I built a "portable" solar generator that we could use on the camper when we went dry camping. We also wanted to be able to use for things around the house as the camper spends most of its time in the back yard. Like you, we started small and just kept adding on.
I mean it is still small, but, we started out with 600W worth of panels and a charge controller that could handle that much. Now we doubled that to 1200W with 2 charge controllers. We started with 4 Interstate SRM4d RV batteries wired in parallel literally 500lbs of lead acid). Now that they have worn out, we upgraded to 2 LiFePo4 batteries a couple months ago before the big bad tariffs would kick in and they supposedly do 7.2KWH. 52lbs each so like 400lbs lighter on the camping gear. We are running all kinds of stuff. That battery upgrade has been huge it was $1600 all in for the batteries. I want to say it probably would have been triple that price 5 years ago. When it feels like the whole world and all the people in it have suddenly gone retrograde it is fun to see cool useful tech still following Moores law.
The charge controllers have a neat feature of keeping track of every drop of energy produced. It is funny the counter rolls over to 0 after producing a MWH kinda like the odometer on my old 1986 ford mustang would do that at 100k. We are coming up on 2MWH real soon. While kinda disheartening to look at all the money spend on equipment and realize power companies purchase a MWH of energy from each other for approximately $75-80 I still love it and it makes me smile. I think if I ever want to go bigger I need to scrap the "portable" idea and wire a switch into the panel box as right now I am capt extension cord.
As an aside, my aging father who is an old school wrench turning broken knuckle rural diesel guy bought a Renogy Lycan unit out of the blue. I was psyched to know he has this so he is not out slipping on the ice farting around with generators when the power goes out and it is -10 degrees and he's an hour away. He keeps it plugged in the wall and it is ready to go when needed. Our family had a real wakeup call a few years ago when an elderly member who still drove and was independent slipped on the ice in their driveway. Most likely froze to death overnight. Didn't have their phone on their person and the sheriff found her when he was driving past the house the next morning. Family had no idea had just seen her the night before.
