I’ve looked into wind and solar, and it’s just not cost efficient at all. The most obvious issue is having enough wind and sun to meet your needs. That can be countered by having a larger windmill and more solar panels. Then to meet the needs of night time use, windless days and cloudy days. That means batteries, hordes of them. It’s not just expensive to set up but there is maintenance and replacement costs of the batteries.
There will be times when you will need a backup, such as a gas engine driven generator. It’s just not worth it.
Our travel trailer is rigged with solar. On a sunny day it meets all needs. We have three expensive batteries that keeps things going at night. We also have two Honda generators for cloudy days. This is OK for a travel trailer, but not for a home.
My intended question was if anyone had done research to see if decentralized wind could get a good ROI, not necessarily being enough to go off grid. See post # 7 where I elaborated a bit more.
I have solar, a total of 30 panels and 3 Tesla power wall batteries.
Solar can be feasible in locations that get a lot of sun such as FL, AZ, NM and maybe a few other states but it isn’t for many other places. My solar takes care of all my electricity needs. During hurricane Helene we (development) lost power for 16 hours, my house didn’t. Of course once the power goes out you don’t know how long it will be until it is restored.
I got it because of my wife’s medical condition and that we can’t be without power for her equipment.
As for electric bills, we have Duke and they are VERY GOOD at getting what they want from the legislature. When we over produce electricity (which is monthly) they still manage to charge us a “hooked to the grid” fee of $30.80 per month. Initially we had no charges before Duke took over our electricity provider.