Subscribed to this thread. Gotta be some good stuff come thru.

Things I have thought about if I ever get to that point. If grid tied, what needs to be done to separate and add batteries? What kind of tracking mechanisim they provide? This is a very important issue. good friend of mine (retired engineer) bought 4 different 85 watt panels to experiment with to power his EmComm station at home. He performed lots of testing on all 4, including tracking the sun with them. As opposed to just facing them due south, he found that moving them to track the sun at least every two hours he gained nearly 50% more power. Every hour was near 60% more. This was on the most productive panel of the 4. My guess is an automated tracker would be very valuable indeed to a whole house system.