Comment by dlcarrier

I live off grid in inland northern California, and a have a solar panel array large enough to run my air conditioner continuously while the sun is up. It's just large enough to run the blower for a gas furnace in the winter so sizing turned out to be pretty even. Using a heat pump in the winter would require several times larger panel array, and running it at night would require the battery be much, much larger.

My 5 kW solar array and 24 kWh battery is fine for my 1300 sq ft house, all summer long, even when it's cloudy, and it works great for clear winter days, but as you mentioned for extended days of bad weather, the battery runs empty. Fluffy white summer clouds aren't a problem, but thick winter rain clouds let in so littl light that the whole array can't even run a 200 W refrigerator, so a few days of rainy weather depletes the battery and I have to top it off with a generator.