Sadly I see a lot of off-grid solar systems fail in the fall. They fail for all kinds of reasons, from shading to improper wiring, but the most common is that the solar array can simply not produce enough energy to support the load. In other other words, the solar system was incorrectly sized. There are several reasons the system could be sized incorrectly, from incorrect solar data to incorrect load estimates, but one that should NOT happen is that the system was sized fo

Nowadays there seems to be a standard for almost everything, and the same holds true for solar. There are actually several industry standards for solar, that vary from components (e.g. solar modules) to system design (e.g. stand-alone solar, hybrid design). I'd like to focus on a couple: IEEE 1561 "Guide for Optimizing the Performance and Life of Lead-Acid Batteries in Remote Hybrid Power Systems" and IEEE 1562 "Guide for Array and Battery Sizing in Stand-Alone Photovoltaic