All easier said than done.

The fish element is very tricky. It requires fish breeds which will grow to a harvestable size in a relatively small area in the climate where you expect to live.

I was just discussing this with a guy from Lousiana and he is reccomending catfish, but catfish also are in my not so humble opinion, a "trash fish", with very little meat compared to waste. Good news is that all of the waste (fish guts, head, spine ect) can be fed to hogs.

I would also highly suggest looking into what John Wesley Rawles is saying these days. The shift is toward supporting and beefing up a rural farmstead type place, not trying to be the hero of the culdesac. Now personally, I think the culdesac places can work.

Converting a regular on-grid home to off grid is just about NEVER cost effective. What makes off grid technology cost effective is that it makes previously unserviced properties usable, which means unimproved land or land without much for utilities can become usable for less than the $30,000 in power lines, permits, and contractor costs that are averages for regular municipal hookups.

We can do pretty decent off grid electrical power in the $3,000-$5,000 range as long as you are not too agressive about power usage. Go up to $10K and you can run a pretty decent little workshop on the free electricity and generate income one way or another.

I currently own around 2KW worth of solar panels, but that is not all on a single large array. About 600 watts will be contributed to a group array at a retreat which will be producing just about 2KW to run a workshop through batteries and a 5KW inverter which will be the equivalent to running a 5KW gas generator whenever the sun is out, but with no fuel costs. There are equipment issues with occasional component replacement, no so much on the panels, but items like batteries, charge controllers and inverters.

Tracking the build cost on the semi-mobile workshop array will help us figure out where to price them at when we are trying to sell them, but I am thinking they will be around $4500 to make, take a week or two to make, and ought to sell for no less than $6,000 per copy. Sounds like a lot of money to replace a $500 generator, but remember, there is no fuel cost after that and the systems can easily have a 20 year service life, that's running 20 years, daily. At the 20 year mark, it will likely still work, just need a rebuild.