> But no such cheaper options exist

None? Project Solar? The last time I seriously looked at doing rooftop panels, they were significantly cheaper than the door-to-door jerks.

Depends on many factors. If installers are able to fully fill their available time and crews with jobs at the current price and expanding is limited by the availability of new crews high prices could be a stable equilibrium until a) more crews become available/techniques improve to speed up install times or b) demand relaxes and they need to drop their price to find sufficient customers.

There's also other factors like the overall cost being beyond people's willingness to save for when financing is available or the extra value that financed installs can provide the underwriters when they're bundled and sold as a stable income stream like houses were in the mid 00s.

"If it can be done cheaper someone will" is based on a lot of simplifications and assumptions about the market in question.

Unless there are enough marks for everyone to scam. Then the focus is to extract the money instead of investing in crushing the competition.

Not necessarily. There are little-known monopolies like the eyewear, travel agencies, and cargo fuel (there are many more!) where price fixing like this happens.

This makes me want to start a solar company.

AI can't take my job then.

One indicator is that third world countries can seem to afford it.

"But no such cheaper options exist"

Untrue, at Sunspark we sold to both individuals and companies. If you can install the stuff yourself, buying it direct from the manufacturer is ungodly cheap (~330w panels at $80 a piece when I worked there almost decade ago.)

I call this "the capitalism fallacy": it doesn't exist in the (my) market, therefore it's not possible.

The fallacy is that there are infinite market opportunities but a finite supply of entrepeneurs/business/money to exploit them. Therefore, there are an infinite number of market opportunities that will get passed up for one reason or another.

Residential electricity pricing is 3x-4x wholesale pricing.

Which is gaming a particular kind of rate structure. They would not do nearly as well if grid maintenance charges were decoupled from consumption.

Rooftop solar (ideally with battery backup) allows you to be independent of the grid (yes, even if you're interconnected, if you do it properly), which means PG&E's garbage infrastructure can largely become irrelevant if your system is properly sized.

Only some states allow simple plug in roof top or balcony solar I believe. So depending on your area you might be required to do a grid hookup and lose access to it during outages.

It is labor. It's code. The amount of labor required to do an installation to code in the US is easily 50% more, if not more than that. Australia also has standardized streamlined racking that works on much higher percentage of roofs, the US has a lot more custom construction.

>Labor costs even more in Australia

This is really surprising to hear. Are you sure about that?

> Solar isn't expensive - you are.

I am not a commercial system installer, I am a hobbyist enthusiast who helps others install to avoid commercial installers and their costs. Volunteer labor for everything (racking, panels, electrical), volunteer electrician signs off for any AHJ (authority having jurisdiction) requirements.

Most people cannot install the equipment themselves, which leads to the residential costs I mention. Is it expensive? Price is what you pay, value is what you get. If you cannot find someone to install for free, and cannot do it yourself, the price is the price. You can either choose to pay market rate after getting multiple bids, or choose to go without.

US Dept of Energy: Solar Photovoltaic System Cost Benchmarks - https://www.energy.gov/cmei/systems/solar-photovoltaic-syste...

Energy Sage: Solar panel cost in 2026 - https://www.energysage.com/local-data/solar-panel-cost/

(i am also a community outreach volunteer for https://www.gosolarapp.org for automating permitting and remote inspections across the US, which was incubated at NREL prior to being spun out as an independent non profit; this drives down permitting soft costs)

I have a cabin in the woods, an hour from my house, my choices are either install a couple of solar panels on the roof, or have no electricity.

I'm looking forward to installing a couple of panels on the roof next year. Having power to charge my phone, or laptop, won't take much capacity, I'm not going to use much power other than that, maybe some music but nothing like cooking/heating, or similar heavyweight usage. (I have a wood stove for heating, and gas/alcohol stoves for cooking, along with on-site water.)

Especially if a once-in-a-decade freak hailstorm can take it out…

Because your electric bill goes up every year as the utility keeps asking for return on equity (assuming investor owned utility, math might be different if you're in an electric coop). A solar PV system will produce power for 25 years at a minimum at a fixed cost. Like a mortgage that is fixed versus rent that is not.

It's the equivalent of a bond investment with potential subsidies at the utility, state, and federal level (solar is no longer subsidized, but batteries still are).

https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=411421

https://magnifina.com/articles/rooftop-solar-yield/