Quite frankly I will never recoup my investment going solar but is was a fun engineering exercise.
73 Mike K6AER
100% agree on never recouping the financial investment.
Then again, I viewed the investment in solar not as an investment for financial reasons, but an investment for resilience.
My solar setup is portable, and was built for Field Day. It would work fine if I ever wanted to do POTA as well.
Nowhere near as beefy as what Mike (K6AER) has. But it runs the radio (FT-857D), laptop computer for logging, and lights for all of Field Day, with power to spare. I've got a 120 watt folding monocrystalline panel, a 20 amp PWM charge controller (looking into MPPT), and a 12V 50 Ah LiFePO4 battery. If I don't need to run the computer, I've got a 42 Ah AGM battery box that will run the radio just fine, with the panels to keep the battery topped off.
73 de N8AUC
Eric