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Well the tech for batteries is getting cheaper and better.

Check out this Hak5 rig of van with PV and batteries: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWmCpt2KXOs

From this, it is not hard to imagine if one scaled this setup one could be off the grid now.

I was recently in rural South Sudan, at a place where there are no power lines within 80 miles. So the systems they use must be off the grid by necessity.

There were several PV and battery setups there which worked pretty well. Obviously you need to be careful with the amount of power that you use, but it can run computers, TV and lighting with a reasonable setup.

There was a computer lab at one installation which had one desktop machine acting as a server and about 15 thin clients to keep the power usage low.

Thats why i think CSP and thermal storage (via molten salts KNO3+NaNO3) might work better in the long run (at least in an environment with an atmosphere).

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