My garage space is situated remotely from the house and to all intents and purposes is off the grid with no power. I’d like to look into putting a solar panel on the roof and gather enough rays during the day to power some lighting and perhaps through an inverter be able to run some basic tools (I don’t need to run a welder or anything particularly grunty, just a worklight/drill/grinder sort of thing). Would anybody with experience of these systems be able to talk me through the various components?

My main requirement would be light, enough to illuminate the (6x6m approx.) space to allow me to work in there in the evenings. Presumably in this age of LEDs this should be readily doable? I understand there are some pretty good LED striplights available now...

My understanding is that a simple system would consist of an appropriately sized panel, a charge controller, battery/batteries and an inverter. But the devil is in the details... I guess I'd need to work backwards from the required electrical load and duration and then size the individual components accordingly. An unknown here is the lighting aspect; say I wanted to install six overhead led strip lights at, say, 20W each and have them on for a four hour stretch at a time and still be able to power an inspection light (compact flouro) or run a power drill or angle grinder for a period. I know that induction motors like these have a high draw on startup which then drops during operation.

So if I were to work backwards from, say, a 1000W inverter, what would I need to put in place to run it? If I could be pointed towards useful resources and products from the likes of Jaycar that would be great. I'm not looking to become an expert, just wanting to put a basic system in place without paying an arm and a leg.