Winston_Smith wrote in
:

On 04 Nov 2012 17:12:37 GMT, Han wrote:

I have a 150 Watt inverter and finally got a friend to help hooking it
up to the furnace (we went 99 hours without power in NE NJ, 07410).
Furnace is natural gas-fired, circulating hot water. The inverter
hookup worked fine, but I had to have the engine running, of course.
It is OK for short emergencies, but I'd like better. Will be looking
...

You are obviously using something less than 150 Watts and that's only
when it's running. Think about a 100 W solar panel. If your ''on''
time is less than 50%, you should be good to go with not all that big
a battery. In fact you would never discharge it very much so you
should get good service life.

The solar route sounds very good to me, but I have some doubts. Firstly,
costs for something that won't be very efficient, given the location and
orientation of my roofs, are a concern. Secondly, unless I go for the
gold-plated (figure of speech) install with all the bells and whistles
that pay me back for what I "sell" to electric company, I'd be paying for
something that I won't use 95% of the time, but where I have to make sure
the batteries are in good shape for when the **** hits the fan. Lastly,
with a solar install, I'd want to have most of my home be able to workas
if it was on the grid, not just the most essential things. So it becomes
a trade-off between installation cost and usability. I can't figure it
out and make a decision ...

--
Best regards
Han
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