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Review: Anker's 535 Portable Power Station Keeps Your Devices Running While You're Off the Grid
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I am going to assume you are in the US. If not, find similar resources in your country.
I would start at the site, PVWatts Calculator (nrel.gov) and Google Sunroof, and enter your home address. Select basic solar options and try a sizes of 6 and 10 kW for the system. This should give you a ballpark estimate of how much power you can generate at your home. Then look at your electric bills and see how much power you buy in a year and the rates you pay. These two will give a reasonable estimate on your potential savings which you can weigh against the cost of the system.
If this looks good you can visit your state/country's site to see what information they have on solar. Each US state has their own laws and may have have rebate/credit programs. In the USA you can also get a Federal tax credit of 26% for your system which can dramatically reduce the costs.
If you decide you want to do solar, then you can start talking your neighbors and see who they recommend for installs in your area. And then get estimates from a few installers.
We ended up with Tesla because we could get both the Solarroof (we liked the look) and batteries (Powerwalls) from them and they bundled some discounts. They are often the cheapest solar installer, but like very basic installs and are not that great with service. But, in the end, it is great.
We have very minimal power bills (<$30/mo, down from upwards $500/mo in summer) and the entire house is backed up. In the late Fall storms we had here in Northern California, people around us were out for hours or days and we had power the whole time. The only way we knew the grid was down was from notifications on our phones.
Edit: added Google Sunroof - best case solar savings based on address
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I have been wanting to do some longer 3D prints, but where I live there are often brown outs or blackouts. Any of these spell disaster for a 3-4 day print. Would this be able to be plugged into the printer at all times and be charging and in the event of a brownout or power outage it would, without skipping a beat continue to power the 3D printers at least long enough for me to pause the print or deal with it in some way?
