The area has many FiFo (Fly In Fly Out) mine site workers and farmers all of whom are capable of fixing panels to roofs and racking batteries .. the wiring and looms are either "done by a mate" or done from a sketch on the back of envelope, or reading the sheet of instructions that come with an order.
The important part, safety, comes at the end when one of the few working town electricians (or an "off duty" mine electrician) checks the wiring for safety and compliance and signs off on the work for a fee.
Like many things the total cost is sweat equity + mail order prices + professional inspection and sign off (for insurance and peace of mind).
And then California wonders why construction is sooooo expensive.
I got a good lump sum saved up by the end of university and I was ticketed with experience on bobcats, haulpaks, loaders, mini-cranes, heavy rigid trucks, etc. along with trades assistant experience working for electricians, gas fitters, fitter and turners, riggers, plumbers, radio technicians, belt splicers, etc.
That meant that while I wasn't a qualified electrician I did know how and what they did and had done most of the work myself under supervision.
I veered into Engineering (Trad.) then Mathematics, then Geophysics .. but I was well set up to go into trades had I wanted to .. more importantly I could do a full gas fitting layout for a glass blowing studio (isolation valves, pressure valves, furnace, annealing oven, glory hole, leakproof joins, etc) just not legally connect it .. for insurance and peace of mind I get an actual working tradie with insurance to inspect and signoff on the connection to a large rented LPG tank.
It's a very Weddings, Parties, Anything * kind of state (ie. many people here are comfortable taking on many types of work; typical for large area low population places).
* Any song you want
Playing requests now on the bandstand
El Clash combo
Paid fifteen dollars a day
Weddings, parties, anything
And Bongo Jazz a specialityAs the statista.com report says >...Rooftop solar photovoltaic installations on residential buildings and nuclear power have the highest unsubsidized levelized costs of energy generation in the United States. If not for federal and state subsidies, rooftop solar PV would come with a price tag between 117 and 282 U.S. dollars per megawatt hour.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/493797/estimated-leveliz...
Looks like that report is a year old, but I doubt the installation costs have really gone down much since then. (Panel prices come down, but labor costs, etc don't.)
Providing the infrastructure and reliability of the grid is very expensive, so there is a huge difference between the wholesale costs and retail rates for delivered electricity. Money is limited and is fungible - a dollar spent subsidizing utility solar will go much, much further than a dollar spent subsidizing rooftop residential solar.
Thats more or less what I expected.
So yes, your locality matters. As does your current consumption, cost of electricity, and so on.
Prices are also falling quite a bit as time passes.
Labor costs either track or exceed inflation, and net metering arrangements get less lucrative as the grid becomes more solar heavy, like what happened in California last year.
But relying on net metering for ROI is a pre-2024 thing. Batteries are getting so cheap.
The same thing will happen with grid-connected residential solar + batteries. Rates will be changed to be based on capacity rather than consumption. There might, for example, be a charge based on your maximum usage during a period rather than total usage.
Grid electricity incurs two basic costs. Generation and Distribution. Traditionally electricity was charged purely on consumption (ie Generation). This made sense when everyone bought all their electricity.
It makes less sense when I benefit from being connected all the time, but only actually purchase electricity when my batteries run flat.
It's like being able to make endless backups for free, but only paying to restore.
As with many other things I makes sense to align billing to cost to value. Thus the cost of "connectedness to the grid" needs to separate from the cost of "electricity consumed".