This is exactly what utility propaganda and PUC manipulation in the US has successfully stopped from happening.
From NEM3 in California, to charging a high fixed fee for being on the grid in other areas of the country, utilities have manipulated rules at every step to prevent a future that has cheaper electricity for rate payers. They come up with rather fantastic propaganda about how ratepayers with solar are burdens on the grid, or concentrated in high-income areas, to try to hide the reality of what's possible with highly distributed electricity generation.
And the media in the US have been very willing accomplices in perpetuating this as well.
I have not figured out why its so different between Australia and the US, but it does seem that Australia has a far greater free-market bent when it comes to these things than the US. It's why solar is 4-6x cheaper to install than in the US.
In California consumer electricity is high because of distribution costs stemming form wildfire risks from distribution in rural areas and sprawl into the wildland-urban interface where many people live as urban areas have historically blocked development. Wholesale generation costs are some of the lowest in the country.
These costs of distortion vary very little based on how much you as an individual consume but they are awkwardly bundled into per-unit charges. As a renter in an urban area I certainly don't think I should pay those costs while those with home solar don't! At current prices I really don't think we should be subsidising home solar at all since it is so much more expensive than utility scale solar.
While a small part of that cost comes from tariffs on solar panels, they're so cheap it doesn't make much difference. The bigger part of the cost differential with Australia seems to be much higher permitting and sales costs.
Yes, because utilities get a fixed rate of profit from grid expenses; but generation costs of electricity are not tied to their profits.
Instead, highly distributed generation, and in particular distributed storage, drastically reduce grid costs. If a house is providing electricity for itself, and feeding back ok to the grid to also power the neighbor, it skips a ton of transmission infrastructure and costs.
And since all grid components must be sized for the peak usage, rather than average usage, and since storage shaves off peaks, distributed battery storage greatly reduces the need for more grid capacity.
(Side note, even though grid costs are $~0.30/kWh and generation is ~$0.10 in California, that $0.10/kWh is still a large fraction higher than in most of the US)
Interestingly, with the new free power periods in Australia, it is now better economically to not install solar panels and instead spend the cost saving on a larger battery. Solar has become so popular in my region that periods where the grid pays more than 0 for power when the sun is shining are a statistical anomaly. My solar panels will now never pay for themselves, pissing away their power to the grid for free, but my battery will pay for itself sooner.
What is even more amazing is how many of Australia's politicians have been in the pocket of coal barons and yet they put up barely any struggle against solar adoption. Compare that to places like California where they've been fighting tooth and nail against green power.
What's funny is that Australian-born Rupert Murdoch has been far more effective in the US than in Australia on this front.
The propaganda is still going really strong in the US. Talk to the population and 1/3 to 1/2 will happily tell you that EVs have fully failed and are being abandoned and will never gain traction in the future. And solar? Lol. Even the people who are saving money with it tend to refuse to talk about it due to the cognitive dissonance.
I thought it was the opposite; it's blindingly obvious that everyone should be getting rooftop solar. The only thing holding me back is the need to work with the condo association on a new roof first.
This is a really important reason why it's not actually obvious that everyone should be getting rooftop solar - not everyone lives in a situation where they can make arbitrary capital improvements to their roof, or even owns their own roof to begin with (I personally live in a rented apartment in a building where the roof space is shared among many tenants). That doesn't mean rooftop solar panels are necessarily a bad idea for people who can do it - it's quite possibly a good idea. But solar panels ultimately require a lot of land area to generate power, and it's often better to use cheap land for this far outside urban areas, than it is to try to put solar panels on the limited sunlight-facing land available in urban areas.
In Australia now, you don't actually want to install rooftop solar. You want to install batteries. No point getting solar when you can charge your battery for free. You just have to ensure it is sized for winter so you don't end up paying the much higher fees for power during non-free periods.
> What is even more amazing is how many of Australia's politicians have been in the pocket of coal barons and yet they put up barely any struggle against solar adoption.
More than 80% of coal mined in Australia is exported. So reduction of coal consumption internal to Australia has only a limited impact on Australia's coal industry.
Long-term, adoption of green power in emerging markets and developing countries is a huge threat to Australia's coal industry – but there is very little Australian industry lobbyists can do about that. And whether Australia goes down that route has only limited influence on whether the coal importing countries will.
Almost ten years ago, in February 2017, the then Treasurer and now former Prime Minister of Australia literally brought a lump of coal into Parliament and metaphorically started licking it while telling all to not be afraid of coal.
Its also electrician unions fighting things like balcony solar (SB 868) and maintaining regulatory capture over licensing and certification to bottleneck how many people can enter the industry by forcing antiquated models like 4-6 year apprenticeships into a career path that could be 2-4 semesters of vocational courses and bi-annual relicensing exams. This keeps installation rates sky high.
Australian electricians (as with most skilled trades) undergo 4 year apprenticeships where they split their time between learning on the job and attending a trade school.
There’s nothing wrong with this model, it produces tradespeople with solid fundamentals and practical experience that they would not receive in a diploma mill.
Apprenticeships in the US come with minimum wage and no to low benefits of any kind, often with no healthcare. If I want to switch from my job to electrician I have to forgo a living wage for multiple years to make that switch. Unless of course I am connected or related to someone already in the industry. The apprentice system is rife with easy low grade fraud where anyone already licensed can simply claim you've done work for them. Meanwhile people coming in from the outside fight an uphill battle moving from shuttered llc to shuttered llc struggling to collect hours that still can be verified years later
Australia has always been big on workers rights and respecting trade work as much as any other, if not more.
Healthcare isn't tied to to an employer and the base level of "free" healthcare (supported by across the board taxation) will keep most alive and get you into an operating theatre for, say, a femoral artery heart stent placement at no cost other than the ambulance (should you not have St. John's Ambulance cover)
On the particulars of residential solar deployment, it's the utilities. (And to a degree, the US's completely backwards permitting system which varies by municipality and mostly exists to drive up costs for everything and maintain stasis.)
Utility leadership is highly tech-averse, change averse, and rooting for the "clean beautiful coal" sports team. But also they can't imagine a future where there's massive electrification, with people switching from gas to getting their car energy from the grid, and being able to profit from it. It's somewhat shocking, but just like US car manufacturers, utility leadership is from a different era and are rentiers, rather than innovators.
From NEM3 in California, to charging a high fixed fee for being on the grid in other areas of the country, utilities have manipulated rules at every step to prevent a future that has cheaper electricity for rate payers. They come up with rather fantastic propaganda about how ratepayers with solar are burdens on the grid, or concentrated in high-income areas, to try to hide the reality of what's possible with highly distributed electricity generation.
And the media in the US have been very willing accomplices in perpetuating this as well.
I have not figured out why its so different between Australia and the US, but it does seem that Australia has a far greater free-market bent when it comes to these things than the US. It's why solar is 4-6x cheaper to install than in the US.