> The high rooftop solar price is usually hidden (at least in the USA)

My understanding is that the (unsubsidised) price of rooftop solar is only high in the USA. Because the cost is almost entirely labor (high in the US) and issues around permitting (more restrictive in the US). Pretty much everywhere else in the world you'll now save money with rooftop solar + batteries even if you can't sell back to the grid at all. Even places that aren't that sunny like the UK where I live.

It is still more expensive than "grid scale" deployments. But there are positive externalities that make up for that: uses otherwise unused space, less grid capacity needed, adds resiliency to the grid (if implemented well with storage).

Rooftop solar in Australia is ~60cents per Watt installed.

> Besides direct subsidies, wealthier home owners have often been paid the retail rate for the electricity they sell to the grid. This causes higher electricity bills for those in apartments and those who can't afford to put panels on their roof

I don't think you thought this up yourself, so I won't blame you for it, as this exact, word for word swill is mindlessly repeated by a lot of people, so thats ample evidence of brainwashing going on.

The subsidies and retail rate (both of which have been murdered by now thanks to swill like this) incentives were not a sneaky reverse welfare program snuck in by the wealthy.

They were infrastructure incentives for people who could afford to make those infrastructure investments.

Investments have always required incentives and a positive ROI. You don't put money into your 401k, Roth or HSA because you expect to lose money in 20 years.

The goal of solar subsidies was never some sneaky wealth redistribution with unforseen sideeffects but rather to rally support from the private industry and wealthy homes to spearhead rapid decarbonization, energy independence, and grid decentralization.

A single mother treading water, barely being able to afford groceries isn't your persona for actually making rapid decarbonization, energy independence, and grid decentralization happen - however, the wealthy that you so despise of, certainly put a 10kWh (sometimes more) PV array on their 3000 sqft rooftop and actually feed power to the grid that was reeling under tremendous growing strain.

People hanging portable solar panels from the balconies of their apartments barely make power to run their kitchen fridge so that's out as well.

Mom and pop landlords and corporate run apartments aren't going to put solar for their tenants because they are not legally allowed to sell power above utility rates while they don't get the 10% guaranteed ROI that utilities get, so that's out too.

As someone who did make those investments back when a solar panel used to cost 100x of what they cost now and electricians who knew what solar even was were rare, I have sworn never to support a government program ever because it always ends up with me getting stabbed in the back once I've helped overcome the bootstrapping hurdles. I have better things to do with my time, attention and resources.

This makes me sad - We could have had a future where the grid was fully decentralized, where our single mother neighbor would never had to worry about the lights getting turned off even when there was a downed power line or wildfire or a snowstorm turning down power lines half a mile away, where she could plug in her EV into my shed instead of having to drive miles away to a crowded charging station.

Instead, I hear no end of how I used to benefit $1000 a year (NEM1) - a +0.33% amortized ROI - and now not at all, for feeding back Megawatts - Megawatts! of pure, regulatory compliant sinewave AC back to my local grid. My next round of energy investments are going completely offgrid because in retrospect, I should have gone completely offgrid right then, instead of spending tens of thousands of dollars in just excavation, fees and inspection costs to get a NEM1 system up.

Without having to worry about grid tie regulations, my family and I would have enjoyed having power while the utility company shut power off for days because there were wildfire conditions in middle of summer or someone damaged the transformer 2 miles away when attempting to steal copper.

If the public doesn't appreciate the 100% pure green recyclable energy I pump into the grid, I don't care about providing it. I certainly haven't recovered even the excavation and meter ($90k), permit ($7k) and "grid compliant" electrician ($6k) fees I had to pay for my "grid compliant" installation - expenses that would have been $0 for my completely offgrid, way more resilient installation nevermind being repeatedly lectured I was able to retire at the cost of people who couldn't afford to put up solar panels.

We are numbers people here - so here's a numbers perspective:

If I had taken the same money I had to spend on a "grid compliant" installation (so I could connect all of this to the grid) and put it into the SNP500 instead, I would never have had to worry about a power bill (as bad it is - $0.60/kWh) but also my inflation adjusted grocery bills for the rest of my life.