Once I had the solar panels up, I was pretty excited to put together my whole system and test it out. The system consists of: the panels, a charge controller, the battery bank, and a 1500 W inverter, which allows me to use regular 120V appliances on my system. While the final installation includes a bunch of switches, fuses, and busbars to safely distribute power, I didn’t bother with them for the proof of concept.
It was incredibly cool to have this up and running! I was able to charge my phone, and my laptop from the solar system, and was also able to run lights late into the night using the onboard power to keep working.