Home battery systems are sold as resilience, as solar maximizers, as energy independence, and as time-of-use arbitrage. The actual math on each of those claims is sober and almost never appears in the brochure. We walk Tesla Powerwall, Enphase IQ, FranklinWH, and the kWh sizing decision, round-trip efficiency, backup duty, and the honest payback picture against solar-only.
Solar
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Home Battery Systems, Honestly -
Solar PV: From Photon to Inverter The semiconductor physics of free energy: how the photovoltaic effect works at the PN junction, why Shockley-Queisser caps single-junction silicon near 30%, what's actually inside a panel and how it degrades, MPPT as a hill-climbing algorithm, string inverters versus microinverters honestly compared, the duck curve solar inflicts on the grid, and real payback math for a homelab-scale install.
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Solar and Battery Backup for Network Gear: A Reality Check An honest engineering assessment of running homelab and network equipment on solar and batteries: load math, panel sizing with real capacity factors, LiFePO4 vs NMC vs lead-acid, DC-direct distribution, power stations as UPS, and the payback math that usually does not work.