Three ways to set up a solar system. The panels are the same in all three. What changes is whether you have a battery, whether the grid is in the picture, and what your house does the moment the power goes out. Pick the setup that does not match your goal, and you either pay for batteries you did not need or sit in the dark next to a roof full of panels. Here is how to tell which one is yours.
Grid-tied: the simple one
Panels, an inverter, and a wire to the utility. No battery.
- Panels run the house by day and feed the surplus to the grid for a credit.
- At night you buy power back like always.
- It is the cheapest way in and the fastest to pay off.
- The catch nobody mentions at the sales table: with no battery, the system shuts off during a blackout. By law it has to, so it cannot backfeed a line a lineman may be working on.
Right for someone whose only goal is a smaller bill and who can shrug off the occasional outage.
Hybrid: grid-tied with a battery
Same grid connection, plus a battery. The grid backs up your battery, and the battery backs up the grid.
- On a normal day you store the midday surplus and run on it in the evening instead of buying it back.
- When the grid drops, the house keeps going on stored power.
- A small bank runs your critical loads: the fridge, some lights, the internet, a few outlets.
- A big bank runs the whole house, AC included, for a day or more.
This is the setup most of our customers want, and on the hurricane coast it is easy to see why.
Off-grid: no utility at all
No power line, either because there is not one or because you cut it. The panels and battery carry the whole house alone.
- No grid to lean on when a run of cloudy days pulls the bank down, so the battery gets big and the design gets careful.
- Many off-grid setups keep a generator as the last line of backup.
- It costs the most per watt, because the storage has to do everything.
Right for a remote cabin or land with no service at the road. Overkill for a house with a working meter, where a hybrid buys nearly the same independence for a lot less battery.
How to pick, in three questions
- No utility line, or would one cost a fortune to run? Off-grid. The decision is made for you.
- Have the grid, only want a lower bill, and fine with the power going out in a storm? Grid-tied.
- Have the grid but want the lights, the fridge, and the AC to stay on when it fails? Hybrid. The honest answer for most Florida homes, and why hybrid is what we build most.
One more thing. You do not have to decide forever on day one. A system can be built grid-tied but battery-ready, wired to add storage later without redoing the whole thing. Start where your budget is, and grow into the rest.
Want each setup as a real parts list, priced to your house? The system builder lets you pick grid-tied, hybrid, or off-grid and shows exactly what changes.