Athens Electric installed a grid-tied system with battery backup for an off grid home in West Virginia.

Although the size of the photovoltaic system is small, 650 Watts, soon to expand to 1040 Watts, it serves more complex purposes than a grid tie only system.   It provides back up power in times of power outages.  The batteries can be charged from a generator, the grid or the solar array.

The heart of the system is the Outback VFX 3648 inverter, capable of feeding 3600 Watts of power into the homes wiring system in the event of a power outage.  A 48 volt battery bank stores the power to be used in the case of an outage.