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Engineer here, so I'm aware of the fundamentals of "how not to kill yourself with electricity". Anything tying into the grid I'm definitely calling a professional for.
But no, I'm not in a financial or property situation to install a grid-connected system, so I was imagining a "balcony solar" kit that'd just charge a small battery bank I could run some lights, a fan, or some similar low-load devices off of. I don't know if such a thing exists (or if it's a smart idea), but I'd like to look into it and find out.
Yeah for sure. You could get an all in one inverter battery bank, but I prefer piecemeal systems because of repairability/replacing parts/upgrading parts.
Basically you'd get a battery, when I was shopping around I found eg4 or gyll batteries to be the cheapest. Small Texas company. That could have changed. Some ppl make their own or use them from a car, but soldering plus making a management system seemed like more than I wanted to deal with.
You need a way to charge the battery (panels etc) and also a way to get the power into the battery safely and efficiently (charge controller).
And then you need a way to get energy out of the battery to your apploances. You can get DC appliances that match your battery voltage or get an inverter.
For all of those parts you need to run some simple calculations for efficiency and compatibility and use case (how big of a system etc), as well as some fuses and possibly lightning arrestors and grounding.
Totally doable and a good bit of fun