We're a retired couple and (while the money lasts) currently self funded. I watch the bills for services very carefully!
But I believe that commercially supplied power (and water too) still represent fairly good value for what they do for us.
I've looked into being self sufficient in various areas and we do have backups for our important systems - e.g. 25,000 litres of stored water for either possible domestic use or bushfire fighting (we live in a fire prone area and over 50 houses were lost nearby in a major fire). We also have mobile modems and of course phones, and a generator that's professionally wired to the house so that we can switch over when the power goes out (over 20 outages per year is common).
We also have a solar system on the roof which reduces our monthly costs.
When I looked into it in the past, the benefits of 'economies of scale' that you get from having a big generating source that serves hundreds of thousands of households still seemed to outweigh the financial and environmental costs of us all having our own systems. Going off-grid seemed largely a personal and philosophical choice rather than necessarily a cheaper way to go. However, the market is changing fairly fast so that may become outdated.
On the issue of cost, solar looks good initially. It's easy to reduce your bill substantially. But after a certain point it gets a lot harder because you cant generate at night but you still usually need power then. Depending on the buy-back rates (which are pathetically low in WA) you need to generate (during the day) at least three times what you need to use at night or you're still losing money on the deal. And the peak period for solar generation is not all day, it's mostly just a few hours. So for true independence you need batteries - and they come with their own set of pros and cons...
Environmentally it also sounds good initially but if you look a little more closely at all the hidden environmental costs of manufacturing and transporting panels and inverters, it's not quite as rosy. And you need to factor in the service life and replacement needs (they don't last indefinitely and failures and performance degrading is a reality). And of course batteries are still a big issue both from a performance and service life angle but also environmentally when you take into account manufacture and disposal.
I believe it's worth supporting and that the solar industry is getting there, but I suspect that it still has a way to go before it can truly claim to be both financially and environmentally superior.
It's also been interesting to see a shift in attitude by the local power company. Initially they seem quite resistant to domestic solar power and even put limits on the necessary permissions to instal them if they felt that a particular street or area was already producing as much surplus power that could be dealt with by the existing infrastructure. However I recently heard a spokesman claiming that they are now looking at solar as a possible useful extra string to their bow. Largely because they have twigged that, especially in rural areas with bigger distances, it could save them money installing conventional grids. But at least attitudes are changing.
All the best with finding a solution that suits you.
Cheers,
Chris