Buying cells and building your own panels is allot cheaper and for me its like a hobby that i enjoy doing . Beats sitting in the bar lol. I find that building small panels and tying them in together is allot easier then building large panels . I use battery myself because im off the grid totally they still charge you to be tied in and my plan is not to have a bill at all .The biggest thing there is to have a large battery bank to store every drop of electricity you produce . I just use car batteries that i pick up cheap from the junk yard 30 in all . I use a propane refrigerator and instant hot water heater for shower and dishes . Cost around $ 50 every 3 months give or take . If sun and wind fails i built a 12 volt generator to charge the batteries from used part cost me around $1 dollar a day to run .I live in mi to but if you build your panels right you will still get enough power from them on a cloudy day .

All and all building your own panels and mills will save you tuns of money . You just need to do a little research on how to its all free info if you look it up and use a little imagination . I will be having free info on how i do it soon as i get my web site built using things most through in the garbage . Not only how to but how to recycle for power .

The MOST efficient thing you can do in the time before you install is monitor and reduce use. Energy saved at the consumption side will save on pv and turbines needed, thus saving money two-fold. Things such as insulation (energy audit all around would be good) elimination of standby power loss, switching to cfl and led lighting, ins6tallation of room occupancy sensors, etc.

After this is done if you check out homepower magazine they have quite a few answers from people who have done it already and a few of the articles are free.

Good luck

Oh yea and since it doesn't sound like some soldering will bother you I very much agree you should make your own panels.

You'll need to first check on whether or not your neighbors would allow you to have a wind turbine as not only are they a visual impact but they are noisy as well. Often, many neighborhoods will also prohibit solar panels because of the visual impact but it's easier to get an exception for solar panels then for a wind turbine. Predicting useful hours of sunshine is easier than predicting useful hours of wind as winds must be in a very narrow range for the wind turbine to produce electricity. With a grid tie system, you would want to up the generation capability somewhat as the energy is usually sold to the utilities at a rate half that of the rate that they would sell the energy to you at. This means that if you assume your energy usage to be at the same rate throughout the day but you would only have 3.5 hours of useful sunshine per day then you need to size your power capacity such that the energy produced over the month is 1.85 times that of what you expect to use ie.: 1500 kWh not 800 kWh. But of course, your energy use profile won't be constant throughout the day and if the peak daily use coincide with the periods of sunshine then you won't loose as much to the price differential between what you can sell to the utilities and what you buy from them at. It would be a good idea to measure your energy usage versus time of day for a while as well as available sunlight and available wind power over that same period of time. The government has average wind maps that can give you a rough idea but remember that the wind has to be in a narrow range, too fast and you can't generate power for safety reasons, too low and you just can't generate the voltage required hence the published average wind doesn't necessarily reflect what's available for power generation. So start with reducing your energy use, insulate, insulate, insulate, and monitor your energy usage versus time of day and both solar and wind power availability versus time of day. The more data you collect the better, use the Farmer's almanac to guesstimate future general trends and to determine if the data you've collected is for a typical season or an atypical season. Try to run a WRF weather model if you're have any meteorological knowledge and computer knowledge. Most importantly, find out what your local HOA and deed restrictions will allow.

I'm just starting to research solar and wind too. Here are a couple of sites that I found interesting.

Build your own solar panels:
http://solartechtown.com/how-to-build-a-…

Wind Generator:
http://skystreamenergy.com/