I was thinking about a small amount of solar capacity as backup power and to reduce costs at my parents' house, since I noticed panels are actually pretty cheap now (I found a 100W panel on Amazon for $70 shipped).
It seems pretty sensible to have ~200W of panels that can handle all the idle load during midday with a basic grid tie inverter like this:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/3256801761659631.html
At in California, 2 panels and the inverter will pay for itself in 2 years.
Once the maximum power produced exceeds the minimum power used then you need batteries and a more expensive inverter which considerably raises the cost, though that would be also more useful in a power outage.