FWIW, my guitar player just bought for his home about $4,000 worth of solar panels mail order from some company in California (he is an electrician that actually specializes in solar installations). 280 watt panels for $.61 a watt. I forgot the name of the company, but I’m planning on doing the same in the next few weeks. I want to run EVERYTHING off it if necessary. I may even augment with wind power (we can get serious wind here at night because we live on a plateau).
Part of my reason for posting is to bookmark this page, since I can’t really answer your question. Yet.
The cost on a power windmill gives about a 50% ROI over the life of the windmill. I have actually seen the costs, run the figures.
Battery storage is your biggest cost.
If you have the space, add a cistern for your well with filters, fill the cistern using the pump during the day. That takes the load off the batteries in the night hours as well as keeping the overall pressure up, and giving adequate reserves in case of power failures. You don’t want to be relying on batteries to drive a well pump. These are power hogs.
I would concentrate on the devices first. Try to go all DC to reduce conversion loss. A high efficiency DC freezer, ice could be used in a high efficiency ice chest for refigerator. Leds instead of 40 watt bulbs, etc.
Your observations are very correct. This type of installation is very location specific.
In the desert southwest it is more reliable.
I noted his comment about pure sign wave inverter. That does not mean 60 cycle. DC to AC inverters are not generally efficient at low frequency. Most such inverters operate at several thousand cycles per second and even those are 50% or less efficient.
Ping for later info...
.