Thank you for the great advice. It will take a while for me to digest the info. I didn’t think about the pros on zero output option, makes sense to retain control. Not in it to make money from utilities, just want to have more control over electric sourcing. There is a neighbor on the next block currently having solar panels installed right now, so I’ll get more information from him and his situation. He’s got huge panels getting added, looks about 2ft by 6ft or larger each, maybe 13 so far on 4 roofs. I plan to upgrade my main and submain electric panels this or next year and am thinking of doing solar at same time.
My inverters (two Sol-Ark 12kW Indoor, but what I'm about to type applies even if it's just one inverter before I upgraded) allows up to 3 electrical panels to be used for 3 purpose. I already told you about the intermittent panel powered with the Smart Load feature. The other 2 panels are the "main panel" and the "critical load panel". The critical load panel is powered when the grid is down and my inverters switch into emergency power mode. In emergency power mode, the main panel is not powered. Because my two inverters can act like a whole house generator (providing 16kW continuous AC power when the grid is down), I have almost all circuits in the critical load panel. Truthfully in a grid down situation I can't have every appliance in the house running at the same time (max 16kW, if just one inverter it'd be 8kW). But my wife and I'd have the option to choose what to turn on. And things like the hot tub can keep running enough to keep the water warm (so the pipes in the hot tub don't freeze in the winter), even if we don't get in the hot tub while the grid is down and power the jets. One of my two 240V outlets I charge the EV with is in the critical load panel, so if grid is down for a week like it was for some people near here after the April 2011 tornado, I still have power to charge my EV.