building an energy management system for an EG4 PV system

There are any number of people posting about the huge PV systems they are building to support either taking their home offline or supporting the majority of loads for long period of time when grid power is not available. In most cases I don’t see any analysis of loads and the potential for shifting loads or powering their home more efficiently. It seems to me the first step should be understanding what you need and where efficiencies can reduce both the maximum power required and the average power need to operate all loads