Thank you very much for your kind, considerate, and cautionary response. I can totally understand that out of my depth, and I am asking the wrong questions based on my vantage point. One question that I would now add to my list of questions would be form of the 3rd question, but more like: “what are the right kind of questions I should be asking myself when approaching this broad topic?”.

I kind of want of something in between the first two potential interests. Imagine something that is like a cross between a solar panel and a night light that you plug in to an AC outlet, but that plays nice with the local power grid in every which way. Sure the amount of power it could produce would be negligible, but being able to create something that is able to feed the grid and meet all appropriate regulations for the electrical code would be an accomplishment in itself. I don’t know what the physics and capital costs behind creating something like that would be or if this idea absolutely infeasible because of the same physics and capital costs, but that is also what I am trying to learn. I am also not married to this idea at all: it is just an illustration of my level of knowledge on the subject matter as a whole, and the kinds of questions that first come to my mind.