True energy independence in even a small capacity has a value beyond just money.
As an example, during one of the hurricanes that came through FL last year we lost power shortly after the storm hit. I had a smallish leak with water coming in, it was entirely manageable with a wetvac, running off my generator. But solar panels would have been producing zero output at the same time. Even a large battery bank would have been sufficient.
IME, Solar is something where there is often a case where the minimum investment to get a truly worthwhile system is higher than other things like generators, or recently even battery banks. People often overlook all the situations where solar won't produce any output. I look at solar as more of a second-tier energy independence solution than a first-tier. And it worth nothing this is speaking primarily for applications in North America that have generally stable power. If you're in a remote area with no reliable power infrastructure then the parameters are way different.
(Worth noting that during load shedding only a subset of people are turned off depending on the stage of load shedding, but on average I experienced about 25% of those totals)
Where I am the companies charge a ‘line charge’. It’s about 20-25% of the monthly bill.
I generate somewhere between 80-110% of the power I need, but in winter I only get half what I need from solar.
A larger system would cover this and negate the need for the line charge, suddenly saving a lot.
..water.. ..food.. ..housing.. ..information..
I get what you are trying to conveying, I just wanted to highlight the semantic generality of the statement if it stands alone.
The well and septic system require no real effort on your part once installed, though you may find harvesting your own food to be too time consuming or labor intensive to really be actually independent.
I've lived with well water for all of my life except my college years and a few years after. In all that time, the only maintenance that's been needed has been to replace a water pressure tank (not a difficult job unless you've never seen hand tools before) and adding salt to the softener once a blue moon.
My sister in law had to get a new well put in, but that was because it needed a new well pump and the plumber she called told her he couldn't work on the existing one because it was out of code and her well wasn't grandfathered in.
Maybe you could get a bigger one if you have a large family, but I've never heard of one that would be large enough to dump that much water except for mountainside cabins that are too far from the water table for a well in the first place.