Opinions are like bellybuttons, everybody has one.
Some can even have a "classic" opinion.....
However, it is a widely excepted opinion that an off grid residential system would cost the same as a lifetime of paying for grid power. An exception to that would be a remote off grid home where the homeowner would have to pay the utilities to set many poles and run miles of wire. The PV industry tried to change this by coming up with battery-less grid interactive/PV/inverter systems. All in all, photovoltaics is very expensive no matter how its advertised. Why else would one of its selling points be that you can get government assistance in the form of tax credits and buy back programs for utilizing it? Not to mention, you would be saving the planet Earth.
Personally, I think that last point is moot because all it really does is enable the energy addiction.
Look at it this way, does your power provider generate electricity by burning coal? How many of your years on Earth do you expect to pay for grid power? How many $ per year? 40 years at $1000.00 a year? What kind of PV system could you put together for $40,000.00?
Ask yourself, "How is it that the human race thrived on the planet Earth for thousands of years without electricity as we know it today, but I cannot live without electricity?"
If you are allready on the grid, re-learn how to live without electricity, slowly wean yourself off of it or as much as you can manage then think about PV and other alternatives. Other enablers include LP and natural gas, fuel oil and kerosene, wood and coal, but of course why not just let the power company burn coal for you right?
How did the human race do it for thousands of years? What are the basics to human existence on Earth?
That would depend on region first of all so I will use New England.
What people are/were indigenous to that region prior to utilitized electricity? Wampanoag perhaps? How did the Wampanoag live "off grid" before the "white settlers?"
http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/cultural/northamerica/wampanoagculture.html (I offer my respects to the Wampanoag and their ancestors on their Day of Mourning, for it is all I have to give.)
Of course we can't have 6.5 billion people living that way world wide now can we? The affects of that would be disastrous to Earth, to say the least; but aren't the affects of 6.5 billion people just as disastrous to Earth the way we are living today? Why else would "saving the planet" be another selling point for RE?
http://www.history.com/states.do?action=detail&state=Air%20and%20Water%20Pollution&contentType=State_Generic&contentId=58538&parentId=earthOne more question for you, and this is a little off subject but one I feel needs to be ask. How is it that the people of this American nation allowed the U.S. government to set into motion, the means of turning America into a socialist republic?
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/14/business/economy/14treasury.html?_r=1&oref=sloginThere used to be the U.S.S.R. or, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, now its just, Russia. Will it soon be that U.S.S.R. stands for the United States of Socialist Republics? The answer may lie in Article 1, Section 8, Clause 18, of the Constitution of the United States of America. McColloch vs. Maryland
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/article01/44.html#1