This is at the heart of living off grid.
With few exceptions nobody wants to regress back to living as they did a few hubndreds years ago. Kerosene lanterns mat look charming but represent an unacceptable fire hazard. A wood stove is fine for house heating in winter but a wood cook stove heats up the house in summer. Making it unbearable. Propane cooking is preferred.
At the very least people expect electric lighting and if they want to keep in touch power for a laptop and a cellular phone is needed.
The advertising media is full of ads for solar power. A lesser number of websites advertise wind turbines. Both methods are viable in the right time and place.
Unfortunately the sun doesn’t shine at night and the wind does not always blow.
Even during daylight you may have heavy cloud cover thus reducing how much energy you can harvest from the sun.
Bottom line you will probably will need some means of storing energy for when your system cannot produce energy.
This Storage is what we call a battery. It can take many forms by the most common is lead acid batteries. They are heavy and expensive. Unfortunately it is mainstream technology and is the most commonly available technology.
Some of you have heard of ‘grid-tie’ solar systems. The concept sounds wonderful however, when the grid goes down so does this grid tie system as the residents of Brisbane
Grid tie systems quite often do not contain battery storage. In order for such a system to work you need a disconnect switch anda battery bank plus a charging system.
Quite often solar panels intended for grid tie are fabricated to deliver as much as 200V peak a voltage which is useless for charging 12V or 48V battery banks.
To make a solar system independent of the grid can be expensive which makes the grid tie only version look attractive.
Other systems of storing energy have been tried and at utility level of power ha proven successful. However it is not cost effective or practical for small home owner systems.
New battery technology such as lithium ion is very expensive; costing roughly 3X – 5X as much as quality lead acid. Batteries.
An old technology based on nickel and iron offers hope of long life batteries with low toxicity but once again cost rears its ugly head. At this time only one factory source per continent is active and offering any battery. To the general public. The cost os roughly twice what equivalent lead acid cost. This is not an option unless you can afford to be on the bleeding edge of technology.
With few exceptions water storage behind dams is at present the only way to store energy but red tape and bureaucracy makes even this form difficult for the small sized home.
Energy conservation is at present the best choice. It means you need a smaller power generating source to meet your needs.
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