A few questions about roof solar panels -
It is not unusual for me to have hail a couple of times a year. Not large enough to damage a roof in good condition, or require repairs, but I wonder about solar panels.
How well would these panels handle hail? Are the panels themselves bare to the open air, or are they enclosed in plexiglass panels or otherwise covered? How much extra home-owners insurance do you pay to insure such a system?
What, I’m wondering what the latitude is where you live, and the direction and pitch at which your solar panels are mounted. Do you have separate panels mounted above the roof, or are you using solar “shingles”?
I have no extra home insurance. The PV panels are quite tough. I have only had large hail once and I found no visible damage to the panels. Small hail is not a concern. There is no Plexiglass involved as far as I know. There does appear to be a special coating that is quite tough.
latitude=40.3 (Central Jersey)
My panels are mounted on the Southern Roof of my ranch style house and but as panels raised slightly above the roof. The pitch is roughly 30° as a quick guess.
Pretty much right. If you have the solar panels, get the backup batteries to handle times of no sunshine and power outages, which seem to be more common lately. You still have to monitor your power usage. You don’t want to run down your batteries running the air conditioning for a day and find that the food in your refrigerator is spoiling on day three when your batteries ran out and the power company is still at lunch. Getting completely off the grid take a large, efficient system but it can be done. The system has to be designed and installed by experts. There are codes, laws, rebates and building permits that must be accounted for. These things vary by state and area. There is a federal law that is due to run out this year but probably will be extended, Study up on it and you can do fine. The impact of the credits and rebates is significant. Just don’t pretend that you can buy a panel at WalMart, plug it in and be in the energy business. In fairness the the power companies, if there is an outage they want to be able to send out a lineman for repairs without him getting electrocuted by power that is flowing back through the cable from some unnamed source.
6700 megawatts? Good lord!
That’s more than 1.21 jigawatts!
Now you are both being silly. 
Almost enough to charge and fire a 1920’s style death ray…