[walrus01]

Yeah one of the big challenges with off grid at that latitude is that your december and january kWh cumulative production (per month) will really suck. It's not as bad as it used to be with panels available at $0.40 per STC watt rating.

If you go to the NREL pvwatts calculator and plug in a theoretical 20kW STC rated system at his latitude/longitude you'll find that the Dec. and Jan. production will not be very much at all.

Sometimes it can be more affordable to significantly over-size a system to product enough kwH per month in mid winter vs. spending $4000+ on a generator.

If you can get 360W 72-cell panels at $150 a piece in whole-pallet quantities, 4000 bucks buys a lot of panels... Not counting the mounting and cabling and junction box cost.

As a budgetary figure, can easily spend $4000 on a small Generac propane generator and wiring/transfer switch.

At other times it can totally make sense to have a small generator to run 2-3 hours a day in mid winter, feeding a charger that can add a constant 1500W into a battery system to keep up the battery string voltage.