Ive seen a few people talking about solar applicaticatons for running freezers etc and think if you are going down the solar route start small. A nice starter project is running some lights from solar panels. You need solar panels, a battery, a suitable light and some elictrical cabling. Is all you need for a basic set up but if you get solar panels exceeding 15 watts in total you will need a solar charge regulator for safety reasons.
Lots of places sell 12 volt solar panels and ebay is a good place to start. The lighting can be anything but i would go for low energy lighting and caravan/camper flourescent lights are perfect. The bulbs are only 8 watt so are very power frugal. To start with you could use a car battery but a caravan leisure battery is ideal.
Get your solar panel and attach enough cable from where you are going to place your panel to the location of your battery. Attach the cables from positive on the panel to positive on the battery, and the negative the same. Your solar panel will now put charge into your batttery when ever the sun is shining on it. To cable the light up its the same way of cabling, positive to positive and negative to negative. All the compononets involved have positive and negative clearly marked. Remember if you are buying solar panels above 15 watts you will need to add a charge controller. These are very easy to install into an existing system. You just run the cables from the solar panel, battery and lighting cabling to the controller and this will ensure no overloading of the system.
Start small and have fun and you can achieve sustainable lighting but beware to run other appliances can be costly, try and buy 12 volt appliances like tv's that are low voltage. Running a normal tv through an inverter is a waste of electricity.
If you want any other information ask me any questions, im by no means an expert just a guy whos had a go with solar panels for a bit of fun.
Neil
Solar lighting tips
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The-Great-Nothing
Solar lighting tips
Hi
Cool topic. Any ideas for running a standard fridge or freezer? In terms of how much battery amphours should be reserved for them?
Cheers
Matt
Cool topic. Any ideas for running a standard fridge or freezer? In terms of how much battery amphours should be reserved for them?
Cheers
Matt
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Malamute Mitch
Re: Solar lighting tips
Hi after about 8 years of trying 
have come to the conclusion that unless you want to spend in excess of £10 000 on renewables 
which would not be replaceable in the short term if TSHTF, have gone down the route of NO fridge freezer 
( also see viewtopic.php?f=20&t=2791 )
Using non electric preservation techniques gives you much more reliability and safety.
As too lighting I've found led to be excellent with really really low power consumption, especially in winter when back round light can be used for twelve hours a day. Then add in some low wattage fluorescent s for reading/working etc when needed. 
have come to the conclusion that unless you want to spend in excess of £10 000 on renewables which would not be replaceable in the short term if TSHTF, have gone down the route of NO fridge freezer ( also see viewtopic.php?f=20&t=2791 )Using non electric preservation techniques gives you much more reliability and safety.
As too lighting I've found led to be excellent with really really
low power consumption, especially in winter when back round light can be used for twelve hours a day. Then add in some low wattage fluorescent s for reading/working etc when needed.