The wiring is so simple, we had a couple of gals that hadn’t used a wire stripper, building their own generators in about an hour.
We used an AIMS solar panel which has super high quality construction coupled with an AIMS 2500 Watt PWRINV250012W inverter which has a lot of bells and whistles like a voltmeter and ammeter to monitor consumption, over temp and over load protection plus many more features, to offer diagnostics and system checks without having to add a bunch of extra components.
While it won’t run a house, it will run some small appliances, tools and a LOT of LED lights to drive away the darkness. On my unit I have a 12 Volt Ryobi battery charger that lets me charge all of my 18 Volt batteries, giving me cordless drills, impacts, lights saws and a lot of other tools all recharged by the sun!
I will never fail to emphasize just how important lights are, and LED’s are the only way to go with a solar generator. Check out some of the LED projects we have done, and stay tuned as we have some other LED house projects on the calendar.
Look at the miter joints on the AIMS and you will see a perfect joint that would probably hold water. The sealant is also very consistent, both signs of good construction and attention to detail.
Complete with all the bells and whistles, the solar generator should give us years of service.
Pretty simple setup. My charge controller has a night light feature which turns on a light when the sun goes down, useful with an LED light for security purposes.
If you don’t have a Solar Gen, you should think about building or buying one, it could mean the difference between a bearable outage and a miserable one.
Preparedness is Fundamental 
What kind of charge controller did you use?
It was an ebay 30 amp to allow for expansion