with the sticky wet snow we had in this storm, solar panels are gonna be dark for at least a day or so. And every night :) Anyway, if you're in a situation where you need to have some number of systems (computer and otherwise) that need to be up, you need to have a system in place to deal with those needs. This probably means a diesel (or maybe propane) fueled generator that sits on a pad, gets tested periodically, and is in general a serious piece of gear no matter what it's size. Or, you might look at putting the critical stuff into a hosted (or multi-zone mirrored) situation, understanding all the issues that brings. ...tom (me, I have my ancient Honda generator and a pile of extension cords.. and when I got power back, moved it to my parents house in south hadley so they could move back in until THEIR power came back. But that's not a critical-infrastructure situation.) On 11/8/2011 12:25 PM, Matt Lampiasi wrote: > Hi > > I use solar. It's not cheap and it's not financially practical to > build a large system of say 10,000 watts as you stated. That seems > like way overkill for an office unless you have electric heat. you > didn't say what you need to power though (did you?). I have about > 1000 watts of panels, a large battery bank and a 2000 watt pure sine > wave inverter. can run pretty much anything in the house, just not > everything at once.