Need advice building a system

Hello everyone. I am writing from San Ramón, Nicaragua, a rural agricultural area in the middle of the country. My spouse and I built a nice 2 bedroom, 2 bath house here, with a cistern that collects rainwater for our water needs. (There is no city water here). However, there is an electrical grid and we assumed that we could connect up to it and meet our electricity needs. This turned out to be a failed assumption. Electricity is sporadic and unstable (voltage fluctuates all over the place).

We have lived for over two years on a gravity-fed water system, in which water is pumped up to a tank and then trickles into the house. Suffice it to say that we do not like it. When we built our house, we decided that we would install a well pump with a pressure tank, so that we would have good water pressure. Thus, we bought a 1.5 HP, 120V, 8.3 amp pump. However, we soon realized that the pump will not run on the poor excuse for an electrical grid that we have here. So . . . we are stuck. We built a house that we cannot move into, because we have no water. The cistern is full. We just need to be able to get the water to our faucets.

The electric company has informed us that in order to approach the problem they will need for us to purchase a transformer and associated systemic components. It would mean an investment of about $12,000 USD (or more). However, they cannot guarantee that it will solve the problem and the equipment would become the property of the electric company and we would receive no compensation for our "donation."

Thus, we have turned to exploring solar with a couple of providers here. Since there is just two of us and we both work outside the home, we estimate that pump usage will average about 2-3 hours per day. Unfortunately, we are not getting satisfactory advice. Each person that we talk to has a different story. For example, one guy told us that we needed 12 - 200 watt solar panels and 12 - 385 amp/hour batteries to do the job for a cost of about $14,000 installed. This would run the water pump and a refrigerator that is rated at using 380 kw per year. This guy's estimate makes no sense to me. Others have said they could do it with 4 - 200 watt panels and a smaller battery bank. Many have advised that we get a different water pump (which they just happen to carry). However, this would require going the gravity water route, pumping water up to a tank maybe once per day. I have already expressed my dissatisfaction with gravity-fed water. But that is what people know here, so sellers always seem to go in that direction. Then, for some unknown reason, many feel that the problem is that I have a pump with a small pressure tank. This seems like BS to me. I could understand if they said that a 1.5 HP pump was the problem. We might have gone overboard on that, thinking that we wanted a pump that could handle showers in both bathrooms simultaneously. However, these guys are focused on the pressure tank. In my mind, the pump does not care what it is pumping into.

Sorry to ramble on, but I wanted everyone to know the context. We need electricity! We probably can deal with the grid (and candles) for lights, but the pump is a necessity. We need a reliable and stable source of electricity to run it. Can someone here please give me a ball park idea regarding the system size I need to run the pump? We are trying to start with that and then build up to an off-grid system with wind and solar eventually. However, we need the pump now.

Thanks!