Looked into it at one time. Not enough wind here to make it worthwhile. With our average wind speed would barely produce any useful electricity.
You asked good questions, my friend. I have the same question. My place is on top of a hill and frequently has 4-30 mph winds. It also has 4-6 days of rain or overcast. My solar is "adequate" and I just added another battery. (5 panels and 5 deep cycle batts). I'm looking into swapping my 100 wt panels for 200 wt panels. The vertical wind generators are tempting but, like you, there are many no wind/light wind days where it would be useless. Looking for reader input.....
That is exactly what I did. I have the heavy loads (electric heat) connected to the grid power and a transfer switch to connect the rest to the grid if my batteries get low. $20,000 for an 11,000 pvw off grid system and I did the install myself. I did find out I am a little short on power so I need 10 more panels and two more batteries. That will another $5000. I paid cash, having one installed and financed would cost twice that.
I don't have wind turbines, but I looked into them some time ago before I looked into solar. They did not seem to be a good decision economically. What I learned then, must be 15 year ago now, what they they would never pay for themselves. Before they paid for themselves they would need to be replaced. Of course we are talking a lot of years and they may be improved now. If you have other reasons for installing them that might be one thing, but if the goal is to save money that is less likely with wind that with solar. I've had my solar panels for over 7 years, they have paid for themselves and will likely last another 10 to 15 years before the panels need to be replace.
I'm in northern California and there's often next to no solar production in January and February. Over the whole year I'm still where I planned to be, but with a modern house solar alone definitely isn't going to cover dark winter months, let alone further north where the days are that much shorter and skies more likely to be dark from weather.
I do. Everything "trues up" in February. My system was sized aiming at about a 90% bill reduction. If you go over 100% you waste it, as net metering pays absolute peanuts if you go over.
You're right about peanuts, Eversource paid .0675 per kwh, and charges about .18kwh. I didn't care, 52 panels consistently produced 15MW a year. System paid off in roughly 8 years. When we sold house, solar brought in enough "extra" money to pay it off again. I did use roof rake in winter, to increase production.
