Comment Re:Panasonic (Score 1) 151
Where it becomes flat out obvious to use a combination of a small wind far + solar power + some sort of power storage (a water tower works surprisingly well if you don't want to mess with different battery types and hydro-electric power plants are incredibly efficient) is in a rural area where you need to pay the power company to string miles of aluminum wire + power poles (and maintenance of all of those poles from hazards of nature & people) from the nearest distribution point. Going off the grid definitely makes sense when you aren't even on the grid in the first place. Just ask the folks at Black Rock City, Nevada.
As a supplement to power generation, home solar panels on a limited basis really do make sense though. You might want to check on the price of solar panels, as they've gone down in price in terms of $$$/watt so it might make sense to start building some on your roof to cut costs. Quite a bit of power consumption in a typical city happens during the day, which is precisely when solar panels are at their peak power production as well. The problem comes when you cross the threshold and are running the power meter backward, thus selling power back to the utility company.
Lead-acid batteries are used for automobiles for two huge reasons: 1) They are incredibly cheap 2) the long-term power storage requirements of an automobile aren't particularly high anyway. An automobile only needs a bunch of amps for power when the starter motor needs to crank the rest of the engine, then the generator takes over (which is when you would typically run the rest of the accessories). It is a completely different situation for a home power system, where you could certainly use other forms of power storage. This could include flywheels (something horrible to use on an automobile even though most internal combustion engines still have some smallish flywheel simply to operate) or some other kinetic energy storage system in addition to something like a battery pack.
At least we aren't using Leyden Jars for energy storage any more. There definitely have been some advances in electrical storage technologies over the years.