This article is great: hard data from someone who is actually doing it.

The way solar panel prices are going, my suspicion is that the most economical way to get a reliable home system is to massively over specify the solar array so it puts out a decent amount of power on the worst possible day. The electronics would be sized to account for your maximum usage, even if that means dumping energy when the array output exceeds what you need. A battery would be sized to simply last overnight, on the assumption that the oversized solar array will be able to fully recharge it the next day whatever the weather. It would only be worth upgrading the electronics/battery if a buyer/money earner could be found for the excess capacity. I need to do the numbers to see if this hypothesis is true.