I remember people making this same argument but for social media, doesn’t make any more sense now than it did then. Corpos are the ones in control of that tool, using it helps them so much more than it does you. If you don’t want to support the ideology that developed it, you really need to just not engage.

Seconding gnucash, there’s modern stuff that’s slicker but nothing that works better imo

The only exception I’m aware of to all fridges having a compressor is propane models. There’s a vessel they heat to build pressure in its place, and sometimes an (incredibly inefficient) electric mode where a resistive heater acts on that vessel. They’re very uncommon, pretty much exclusively used off-grid, and in no way specific to the US.

Hey there, the other answer you got was wrong enough for me to register and chime in. There’s no such thing as a BMS for lead acid batteries and no way to interact with their internal cells. What you’re looking for is called a charge controller, it’ll have bulk absorb and float stages just like your solar. As a rough rule of thumb, the amperage of your charger shouldn’t exceed your batteries capacity in amp hours, slower is easier on them (but more run time on your genset so…)

The simplest and most common way to go is with an inverter/charger combo, I’ve never shopped for a standalone charger and don’t have a specific reccomendation. You can totally get away with using a car battery charger though, especially if you’re mostly using solar, and they are much cheaper. You can even use a welder, as long as you can set it to ~28.8v and an appropriate amperage (and put it on a timer, obviously won’t step down on its own). My neighbor’s using a charger from an old scissor lift, ~$200 on ebay, 25A/600w

If you got followup questions or more details on your setup I’m happy to help, good luck out there