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.
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.
> they put up barely any struggle against solar adoption
They put up plenty.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S22146...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/commentisfree/2024/o...
As with climate change, there comes a point where the propaganda just stops working becuase it's impossible to contest.
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.
Isn't it because the US has a more entrenched "clean beuatiful coal" class of people?
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.
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.