Sound Wisdom FAQs - What You Can Expect The SG-1 will run almost any modern 25 cubic foot deep freeze 24 hours a day with power left over on an average US day of sunshine.  Take it completely off the grid, assuming average sunshine. As it sits, an SG-1 will run MOST refrigerators MOST of the day and night before the battery runs out, on an average US day of sunshine.  More efficient fridges will make it through the night; less efficient fridges will drain it earlier and start to get warm.  Adding a pair of golf-cart batteries and a pair of panels can make it more like a sure thing; take your fridge completely off the grid, assuming average sunshine. "So what's with this "assuming average sunshine" bit?" Your solar panels need sun to recharge the batteries, or the system gets drained and can't do anything until the batteries are re-filled.  A pair of our 120-watt panels will charge a pair of our golf cart batteries for longest battery life on an average day of US sunshine.  If you get storms that run more than one day, you need a somewhat larger battery bank to get through the dimmer days, and some more panels if you want to recharge quickly when the sun comes back out.  Most people want their battery bank completely recharged in one day of bright sunshine; set yours up the way you like.  More panels recharges faster, more batteries lasts through longer cloudy periods. "What do "standard draw" and "emergency draw" mean?" In your car, you have a "yellow line" and a "red line" engine speed, right?  If you keep the car below the yellow line, you won't damage your engine at all.  If you drive it faster than the yellow line, you might burn the engine a little bit.  "Standard draw" is the yellow line: if you use the SG-1 to power more than 5,000 watts of equipment at once, you might burn the electronics.  If you use it to power 10,000 watts of equipment at once, you will destroy it in fairly short order.  However, in a life-threatening situation where you absolutely must have 10,000 watts of power, the SG-1 will deliver it...for a while. Warranty is voided by exceeding 5,000 watts.  We can sell you a replacement unit, should you burn yours out. "Will my panels charge the batteries on cloudy days?" They  WILL charge the batteries, but at a lower rate, because they need bright, intense sunshine to reach their peak output.   It's roughly a direct percentage: if you get ten percent less light, you get about ten perent less electricity out of your panels, and your battery bank is charged that much less than it would be on a bright day. "The SG-1 only has two panels and one pair of batteries.  Will that REALLY give me 5,000 watts?" Absolutely! For about half an hour. Here's a thought: since it's for emergencies, how about not turning on everything in the house at once when you're running on it?   Are you really using 5,000 watts?  Almost no one does.  it's VERY difficult to do in a home setting.  The less power you're using, the longer the power in the battery bank lasts, just like the gas in your car's gas tank: you get better mileage at 40 miles an hour than you do at 70, and the car stays running a lot longer, too. Then it will take the panels about a day of average US sunshine to refill the batteries, after which you can do that again.  Don't let other companies' misleading advertising mess with your mind: nothing is free, and solar power isn't cheap.  However, solar power IS as reliable as the sun, and we've used the most solid electronics, cables, batteries, and connectors available to build longevity and reliability into the system.  This system CAN be expanded to get you completely off the grid, but all our customers so far have bought it as insurance against the failure of the grid (predicted for next year by NASA and NOAA). "But I don't want my power to shut off after half an hour." We don't, either.  First, almost no one ever uses 5,000 watts, so you'll almost never see that happen.  And because we want your power to stay on, we offer additional batteries and panels, and built the SG-1 to be indefinitely expandable.  You can build your battery bank and panel array as large as you like.  You can add batteries and panels you got from other companies, too.  Our manual even tells you how to do that.  We'd love it if you bought all your expansion equipment from us, but we're all grown up, and we know better. We want you in control of your power. The 5,000 watt rating is like the horsepower of your car engine: it refers ONLY to what the machinery is capable of, ASSUMING IT HAS FUEL. The batteries are the "gas tank" in any solar generator system.  When we talk about the horsepower our car engine will produce, we're notsaying it will produce that power when the gas tank's empty - talking about power output ALWAYS ASSUMES there's fuel to provide that power. The SG-1's the same way: as long as there are batteries connected that have any charge to provide, it will give you any amount of power, up to 5,000 watts, until there's no more charge in the batteries. "How long will the SG-1 give me 5,000 watts?" How many charged batteries did you hook up in your battery bank?  Heavy work requires lots of "fuel."  How big's your gas tank? As it's configured from our factory, the SG-1 will give you 5,000 watts for about half an hour. "That's not much," some say. "Really?  What are you going to do that needs 5,000 watts?  That's like driving your car with the gas pedal on the floor, doing the full 125 mph or whatever it may be capable of.  How often do you actually do that?" we ask. "Huh?" they say. We ask, "What are you actually going to run at once?" The bulb usually goes on right about here.  "Oh...at once?  A fridge, a chest freezer, a couple lights, a computer...that's about it." We do some addition in our heads, and say, "Okay, a fridge is normally about 800 watts, and runs about five minutes every hour.  A chest freezer normally uses about the same, but runs even less.  Lights are normally 75 watts and occasionally 100 watts, and a computer about 400.  Add up the lights and computer, and you've got about 600 watts you're using constantly.  The fridge and freezer use about 800 watts for about 4 hours per day altogether, or 3,200 watts for an hour - 3.2 "kilowatt hours."  You may have seen that word on your electric bill; it's how electric use is measured and sold. Now let's assume you use the computer and lights eight hours a day; that's 600 watts for 8 hours, or 4,800 watts for an hour - 4.8 kilowatt hours. So in this scenario, you're using 3.2 kilowatt hours every day for the fridge and freezer, plus 4.8 kilowatt hours every day for the other stuff, totalling 8 kilowatt hours of electricity every day. To provide that on an average US day of sunshine, you need about 3 pairs of our golf cart batteries and six to nine of our 120-watt panels to recharge them.  Sunshine varies; brightness is not the only factor. Since the SG-1 comes with one pair of batteries and two 120-watt panels, to reach that goal you'd need to add two pairs of batteries and four to seven 120-watt panels, depending on the sunshine in your area. See how it works? Whether you use our products or someone else's, we want you in control of your power.  That means knowing how to figure out how many batteries and panels you need, which we've just gone over here.  It also means knowing how to connect additional batteries and panels, and our user manual tells you that. Need more info?  Call 918/612-4090, Mon-Sat 10AM - 9PM, or Sunday 12-6, Central Time.