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.
I have 64 solar panels (total 20kW) and 90kWh of battery storage (not rich enough for Tesla LOL). This is for an all-electric house and charging our EV for 1,500 miles per month (home charged miles alone). My solar is like a "whole house" generator in that I usually don't pull power from the grid. The few times the grid is down, I still have power to the house. But I still need the grid for about 20% of my power throughout the year (most of my grid pull is during 4 winter months). The end result is that my past 12 power bills averaged $71/month. I'm happy with that for not having a natural gas bill nor much in gasoline costs (what little we drive the gas pickup).
Alabama has not been a "net metering" state in forever. I knew that before getting solar. So my math on whether or not to get solar didn't include making money selling power to the grid. All residences are charged $15.60 for being hooked up ($14.50 basic fee + 50ยข natural disaster fee + 4% state tax). If you decide to sell power to the grid there are extra fees, and the costs of those depend on which power sell agreement you choose. For me it's an extra $2-ish in a license fee and power purchase fee combined, plus a demand charge of $1.50 X highest power pull during that month. The end result: I make about $100 more than the extra fees throughout the year. The highest demand fee was in January at 23 X $1.50 = $34.50 (at one point our electric furnace was running while we're charging the EV while we're in the hot tub at night after it rained all day and our batteries weren't charged so all of that was coming from the grid). So for that and other reasons my January power bill was $277. But from March to October my power bills range from -$3.73 to $20.53.
I'm not mad about the stay hooked up fees. Even I need the grid every now and then, so I ought to pay my share of the upkeep. $71/month power bill + the payment on the loan I took out to pay for it all is cheaper than what I was paying in power + natural gas + gasoline (again driving 1,500 miles per month). And because most of my energy consumption is homemade energy, my budget is not hit hard every time the left changes their energy regulations and distorts the market. Decentralized solar combined with an EV has made our home and local driving fairly autonomous as far as our budget is concerned. So it's easier to plan my future retirement expenses, at least the energy cost portion.
For our power outage needs we have a whole house propane fired generator that automatically engages when commercial power goes offline. There is just one small battery for the generator, aside from that there is no maintenance other than occasional oil change. Another advantage is it’s considerably less expensive than all solar and does not have batteries that are of the type that self combust.