Over the years I've considered putting up solar panels to get 'off the grid' however I'm in the foothills of the second cloudiest place in the U.S. (outside of Alaska) so it's not worth the investment. Still considering a windmill though. Cloudiest Places in United States - Current Results
I've alwayes thought that getting our power and other utilities from a giant grid system is asking for a disaster. These giant grids are becoming dated, too costly to repair in a timely fashion and far too susceptible to failure and hacking by foreign and domestic terrorists. There are better ways but there are to many $ signs in the eyes big industries and govermnment to let it happen.
We have grid tied PV solar. Just added a dozen more panels and a Tesla Powerwall for whole house backup. The Powerwall gives us about 3/4 of a day of house power. The panels and the Powerwall will work even if the grid goes down...as long as the sun is shining. With net metering in place, PV solar levelizes what you pay for electricity regardless of what the utility does with the rates, basically you are pre-buying your electricity for the next 20 years or so, ours works out to 7 cents/KwH. We power our entire home and two EV's for our local travel, so we have no gasoline bill either.
The Powerwall was a splurge/luxury. Powering the EV's through the Powerwall will not likely be feasible during the lower production times of the year, like right now, the array will produce just barely enough for the house.
