One place had both those plus a 16 inch or so, water driven generator on a small running spring on the property. The turbine on the wind driven generator was only about 18″. (But spun like a jet driven prop in fairly low wind. I don’t remember the solar panels exactly since I see so many of those, but I think the two of them were about 40f2 each. The key was that it all fed into a shed with a huge, (the most expensive part I think), array of batteries. I think they were totally off the grid, so all of this was required and the excess could not feed back to the power company.

Here’s a neat little article about “front yard gardens”.

http://tinyurl.com/2gsdt2

Solar panels are not a great idea unless you use a good battery system. However, when you start talking batteries, you’re really only going to save money over a decade, and won’t see any initial benefits. As has been said, if you can manage to collect more power than you use, you can sell it back to the grid.

We’ve got a system in place that lets us use leftover filtered tapwater (from our refrigerator’s water dispenser) to water our houseplants. What my wife and I started doing is to pour leftover ice water (and ice cubes) into a gallon pitcher beside the sink whenever we’re done with a glass. We also put the remainder of our toddler’s sippy cups of water in there, too, since the one-way valve prevents the inevitable floaties from getting into the water. This gives us a source of “free” filtered water for houseplants that’s free of some of the chemicals and calcium in tap water (we have very hard tap water), and we also aren’t just pouring the water down the drain after having run it through the refrigerator’s filter unit to make chilled water or ice cubes.

Re: Lawn mowing, we were close to buying a manual mower, but found they could not cut the grass long enough. Longer grass (roughly 2″) is great because you get fewer weeds in the lawn since the grass itself creates shade that stops the weeds from growing. We decided an electric (not internal combustion) mulching mower was the most environmentally friendly and still cheaper to run than the IC mower.

My $.02

Also, why not replace your lawn with something more frugal and environmentally friendly? You have a number of choices. So called freedom lawns, which are essentially a nice way of saying you let the weeds grow, require much less water and work and are actually healthier and friendlier to the environment than pristine, single grass lawns. You may also consider putting in some shade trees and replacing the lawn with shade variety of grasses. They grow slower and the shade means they need less water.

Gal

There is a lot more planning and work involved in the design and installation

Yes you can sell unused energy back to the electric company once you have a second meter installed. Though I’m a bigger fan of intalling a battery system to store this energy for yourself to use at night.