Do you have solar panels?
With the days of sun you get in your part of the country I would think they would actually pay off within a few years. Especially if you built the array yourself.
I had considered building one, but the Mrs thinks they are ugly and will not let me build one that she can see from the house. She doesn’t want it to ruin her view. She used a lot stronger words than that too.
But you must do tons of homework to make sure it's feasible for your particular climate and your particular power consumption habits. For example, my wife is retired and I'm quasi-retired, often at home even when I work. In other words, we consume a lot of power during the day when the sun is shining. When we were younger and working away from home, the appliances didn't run until we came home from the office (when the sun was going down). We have battery storage, but if we were away from home during the day we'd have to have a lot more battery storage to utilize the free solar power --- it'd be infeasible.
That's one of many things you have to stop and consider about your personal power consumption habits before you get solar (assuming you don't want it to change your habits -- it's supposed to serve you, not the other way around).
No, I’m high and wooded, not desert. Plus most of my roof points the wrong way.
If I did solar, I’d need to clear ground and dedicate part of a field. I’m not that motivated.
We do lose power with some regularity, but we have a big whole house generator that runs on either nat gas or a big propane cylinder (situated far from the house and partially sunk and surrounded by a double cinder block wall. Allegedly, it would run full tilt on stored gas for 30 days. Never had to try as nat gas has never been interrupted at the same time as electricity.