Okay, here's my experience. I live in West Virginia, which is far from the best insolation in the US, but not quite the worst. Winter clouds are sure yes indeed a thing here, perhaps makes more difference even than the shorter days and less ideal angle. We don't have a generator, but we have a line to our neighbor's--they have a larger, grid-tied system, and we take a kilowatt-hour or two a few times a winter, totaling maybe ten or 20 kwh a winter--half or close to as much as the typical US home uses in a day. But we use between 2 and 3 kwh a day. I have a huge advantage in that my husband knows his way around electricity and electronics; he planned and installed our system, and assisted others in the area, some with grid-tied or hybrid systems. He also figured out ways to save energy, power supplies for specific appliances so the inverter doesn't need to run. We got our system in 2009, and paid $9070 for four panels @ 220 watts each, eight T 106 batteries, and inverter and charge controller, and wiring and such. Seven years later when these "training batteries" were shot we got a different kind of lead-acid battery, new here but long popular in Europe, tubular batteries--these are very heavy and taller, are in glass or plastic cases so you can see in, and the specs claim that they will be down to 80% original capacity in 25 years--so they'll last us the rest of our lives. They were $4000. We had a problem only once, six months after installation when a close lightning strike fried part of the inverter--luckily it was still under warranty and they quickly replaced the part. We now turn off most AC in times of storms, and even the refrigerator if lightning is striking violently around. My husband decided we needed a couple more panels a few years ago, and here's the interesting thing--the new ones are almost exactly the same dimension as the old ones, but they are 315 watts, and also more efficient in low light, so a good 50% better capacity--and the old ones in 2009 cost $600 apiece, these cost $200 apiece. A year or two ago my husband discovered that the cables which connected the new batteries were unequal and substandard--he replaced them and the difference was amazing--we can go three cloudy days, then in a half sunny day get recharged.
So. Absolutely, DO get solar because the day is coming, I predict, when grid power is either much more expensive or becomes intermittent. But DO figure out ways to cut your use FIRST--if you have to pay someone to help you with this, it will be worth it, but for $25 you can get a Kill-a-watt, which plugs into an outlet, then you plug an appliance into it and it tells you how much power the appliance is using; for things like a fridge it counts the hours so you can assess how much power an appliance that goes on and off uses in a day. (It also tells some other stuff I don't understand, about the quality of the electricity or something.) Also--mounting panels on a roof is not necessarily the best choice. It's best if you live in a city and have to worry about vandalism and theft, or if the roof is the sunniest part of your property and you have a good south face. But ground-mounted panels can be easily adjusted seasonally (the angle of the sun changes quite a bit). And a roof mount means making holes in your roof, quite a project and must be done right not to leak. Also panels are more efficient at lower temperatures, and roofs are warmer than other places. And--we go out sometimes more than once a day in winter to brush snow off the panels with a push-broom--such days are when we need the input the most, but how much fun would it be to hang out a window, or walk over an icy roof, to do it when it's 12 degrees out? My husband posted plans for the ground mount that we and several others in our area, and now others elsewhere have used, on his website which is spectrumz.com, under going solar. The mounts are made of pressure-treated wood.
Okay, aside from panels I'll put in a plug for my other favorite solar device--an attached greenhouse. I have one on the 12-foot south face of our house, seven feet deep. I use it to start seedlings in spring, to dry towels all year and things like beans and peanuts in fall, to house orphaned chicks or injured hens in safety and once in an exceptionally frigid week, all my chickens; I also dry seeds inside paper bags there, and certain bulbs...and of course, it helps heat the house on borderline days so we don't need a fire.