Solar panels are great for an off grid house.
It is not hard to build your own solar array.
There are dozens of videos on YouTube about people that have done it.
Most end up buying the panels, inverters and other equipment from Mission Solar because they make their products in the USA.
I considered doing it myself. I would NOT put them on my roof. I would build a freestanding array point due south and angled. I would have rented an excavator or ditch witch to bring the power line to my house. Then hired an electrician to hook everything up. NH has a NET METERING agreement with the Utility Eversource. That means they will pay you $.06/KWH you produce. Based on that I figured it would pay off within 5-7 years.
This all got VETOED by the boss who said I don’t want to look out the window at a bunch of ugly solar panels.
She used stronger words than that.
I sell power to the grid. I have to pay some extra fees to do so. Thus I net about $100/year from selling power to the grid. The main benefit of my solar is reducing how much power I pull from the grid to begin with. My payback period is early 2032 -- 11 years after I installed the first part of the solar system to play with it for a year, or 9 and a half years after I added onto it based on the math of studying it for a year. That assumes a 3% inflation rate on the energy costs I avoid, no payback for selling power to the grid (in case I decide to switch that off), and the interest I pay on the low fixed-rate loan I took out to buy and install the solar and do other energy upgrades to the home. If I keep selling power to the grid, count it as gravy on the top.
And you hit the nail on the head with a lot of us buying Mission Solar because they're made in the U.S. I bought mine before the Inflation Raising Act changed the solar incentive to expect made in the USA. I simply like supporting US manufacturers. The same for my Sol-Ark inverters being made in the U.S. Now that the OBBB took away the solar tax credit beginning 2026, I fully expect the prices to go down. The tax credit artificially inflates prices just like everything else the govt "helps" us with.
Unfortunately, interest rates aren't as low as they were when I took out my loan. So it'd be harder for someone to replicate what I did, which is replacing sky high energy costs with a loan payment.