Thanks galfert!
Ah, that's what I was afraid of...I guess I will contact AW and see if they know what sort of w/m2 level equates to charging the capacitor. It's 8:15am now and sunny, which correlates to 150+ w/m2 on the solar flux meter and rising fast. The unit should continue to get direct sun until around 2:00pm, until the pine trees move in the way. Even then, it continues getting some flux (around 200 w/m2) until about 4:30pm when it starts to tail off until sunset. So if it's able to charge above 200 w/m2, I'm probably fine. Otherwise...
I'll have to look into ObserverIP and Meteobridge...my goal is just to replicate (approximate?) the functions that Cumulus provided, which was very good at allowing me to slice and dice the wx data to see how various periods compared one to another. WeeWx looks like it will do all that, but it appears I will need to connect the unit via its USB port. If so, I'll have to boot over to Linux on the computer next to the wx console, as I normally run Windows on that machine, but it does dual boot.
As far as the unit choice, I thought the display layout and resolution looked better for the 1002 than the 2902, and even though the resolution is supposed to be better for the 2000, I liked the layout and font sizes better on the 1002. I work from home, so having the display console right next to my computer is handy and the way I best like to "glance" at wx conditions. The units all looked pretty similar and at $200 the 1002 looked like it would do everything I wanted. I think at the time I was also holding out hope that since the 1002 used the EasyWeather software, I might also be able to get it to work with Cumulus, though that does not appear to be the case, and of course, the EasyWeather software leaves much to be desired. If I can just find a s/w solution for post-processing and visualization, I'll be perfectly happy.