If you look at the NREL chart for solar cell performance, you’ll see names like ARCO and Mobil. The thinking at that time was that oil would run out soon, and the “oil companies” needed to reinvent themselves as “energy companies.”
The Lithium-ion cell which seemed so revolutionary when SONY started using it for laptops, etc. was invented by “Stan" Whittingham at Esso/Exxon during that period (as “Stan” tells it, oil companies are used to speculating, they drill a bunch of wells and one produces oil, so they were willing to fund his research, hoping that maybe it would pay for itself eventually.)
In any case, my brother lived “off-grid” a couple decades ago, using a combination of, solar panels, (“lead-acid”) batteries, and a small wind turbine. The PV panels work best during the day (obviously) but especially during the Summer. (During the Winter, there’s less sun hitting the ground, that’s why it gets cold.) The wind turbine was not necessary during the Summer, but during the Winter it was the primary source of energy.
There’s a new type of battery coming to market (instead of Lithium-ion batteries) if I was looking to set up a home with battery storage, I might wait to see what happens to it.
https://superdielectrics.com/launch-of-faraday-2/
From a “systems” point of view, I favor “Community Solar” over “Residential Solar.” For society as a whole, it is cheaper to have a team build and maintain “solar farms” rather than having them run from house to house, and, should you choose to move in the near future, you won’t have solar panels on your roof to consider.
https://www.nrel.gov/solar/market-research-analysis/solar-installed-system-cost
Decades ago, homes could have been built with dedicated generators to provide their electricity, but (as a rule) people chose to connect to "the grid" instead. The same logic that applied then applies now.
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