Visit us on the web for product and project information!
For grid-tied power systems, www.grid-tie.com
Solar water pumping:  www.PVsolarpumps.com
Non-electric gas appliances, www.LPappliances.com
Efficient and DC appliances, www.eco-fridge.com
And our main page at www.oasismontana.com

Time for back-up power? Here are some options.

The uncertainties of the world make us want to prepare for what the future may hold. There are desirables and necessities; me, I love dark chocolate (which is at a premium right now!) so I manage to keep some in the house most of the time. But in terms of necessities, the list gets shorter -- and more critical. Water and food is pretty much at the top of the list; that may mean keeping a pump and a refrigerator going. Everyone has different needs. In this issue we are offering what components could make up a battery-based solar power system and basic costs (before shipping and installation). Here we go.

Here are the components:

Roof mounted solar array

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THIS system will work as a straight grid-tie system (but can have batteries added later), with a 5.77KW solar array and Sol-Ark inverter; A-frame ground mount. Annual production at 46° N=8100kWhr, Monthly consumption matched at 665kWhr, Daily use of approx. 22kWhr. – but no battery back-up.

Components:

Total equipment cost: $12,824

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We do still offer and sell quite a few FLA (flooded lead-acid) and AGM (absorbed glass matt) batteries. The LFP (lithium ferrophosphate or lithium iron phosphate) batteries do generally need to be kept from excessive cold temperatures (well, in general, batteries like the same temperatures as we do – not too hot and not too cold). Some of these batteries have a built-in heating system for extremely cold temps. Many of these batteries are sold with their own BMS – battery maintenance system. Tell us about your site situation and we’ll figure out what works best for your system needs.

Energy Dependence vs. Energy Independence

One shipload of solar modules can deliver as much electricity
as 100 shiploads of coal.

Renewable Energy News +

https://cleantechnica.com/2026/01/26/landfill-panic-vs-system-reality-what-wind-solar-actually-displace/

Interested in agrivoltaics?
- Solar Builder

Rising Home-Heating Costs Hitting Reptile Families Hardest
- The Onion

New Energy Storage Systems Are Killing Trump's Coal Dreams
- CleanTechnica.com

Electricity prices decreased in south australia because of clean renewables 
- CleanTechnica.com

How to safely dispose of batteries.
- batterysafetynow.org

Balcony Solar Is Spreading Across The US    Now will our legislators have the political will to let a good idea work?
- CleanTechnica.com

 This friendly robot just installed 100 MW of solar power
- electrek.co

Climate Degradation Will Have Consequences For "Hundreds And Thousands Of Years"
- CleanTechnica.com

These are windmills:

Wind turbines (or wind generators) make electricity. They are different machines entirely. These are wind turbines:

Nomenclature matters!!!!!
 

Quotable Quotes

No one is useless in the world who lightens the burdens of another.
– Charles Dickens

The older I get, the greater power I seem to have to help the world; I am like a snowball – the further I am rolled the more I gain.
– Susan B. Anthony

Before I build a wall, I’d like to know what I was walling in or walling out, and to whom I was like to give offense.
– Robert Frost

The trouble with referees is that they just don’t care which side wins.
– Tommy Docherty

If I had been present at creation, I would have given some useful hints.
– Alfonso the Wise (1221-1284)

Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like.
-- Will Rogers

It’s income tax time again. Americans: time to gather up those receipts, get out those tax forms, sharpen up that pencil, and stab yourself in the aorta.
-- Dave Barry

The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin.
-- Mark Twain

A democracy can survive only until the people find they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From this time on they will vote for the candidate promising the most largesse with the inevitable result that the democracy will fall due to fiscal irresponsibility.
-- Alexander Fraser Tyler

No one could be so foolish as to prefer war to peace; in peace sons bury fathers, in war fathers bury sons.
– Herodotus

If you hear a voice within you say, ‘you cannot paint’, then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.
– Vincent van Gogh

The human mind treats a new idea the way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it.
-- P.B. Medawar (biologist)

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.
-- Winston Churchill

Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud.
-- Maya Angelou

There are two ways of exerting one’s strength; one is pushing down, the other is pulling up.
-- Booker T. Washington