My concern with articles like the above is that all the talk about savings is heavily influenced by the credits/rebates given by government at time of purchase.
So whilst solar is great (i got it installed recently-ish), the $$$ reporting aren't painting the full picture.
The government subsidises solar installations to differing degrees, depending on your location and the type of system you get. They do this because it accelerates the uptake of the technology and creates jobs, as well as allowing consumers to reduce bills (the primary motivator) and reliance on energy generators.
The irony of course is that it makes life slightly more difficult for the network operator as they need to balance the variable nature of solar output from domestic sites; in places like Geraldton they've had to curtail solar export on domestic systems because it is simply excessive sometimes.
Of course, some of the subsidies like the guaranteed feed in tariff in QLD (44c mind you) were very poorly thought out, and you've got people laughing every time they get a bill, having installed a relatively small (< 5kW) system that paid for itself years ago and now just generates money. The NSW 60c scheme was a short term offering but achieved roughly the same goals.
I also don't see how we are remotely close to solar being a solution for anything more than domestic use. My 6.6kW system doesn't quite cover consumption (with a battery i think it would, so i could live off the grid theoretically), but for any business not a chance. Thats the big battle, which i don't think we are close to solving.
I'm all for Solar - but i'm sceptical as to its capabilities just yet as the energy messiah.
Nothing wrong with a bit of scepticism. Solar alone isn't going to generate everything we need, and nobody I know in the industry is suggesting it will. Sun don't shine at night etc.
Of course, there are - literally - hundreds of business installing millions of solar panels who aren't sceptical about reducing their bills, as well as meet their corporate sustainability goals by lowering their Scope 2 carbon emissions. Given the fossil fuel industry still runs about 80% of our total generation, solar is a quick fix for these companies.
For bigger industry, like Tomago aluminium smelter, bigger solutions are needed.
This is where Australia really needs to step up on wind power, particularly offshore wind which supports bigger turbine generation capacity and better capacity factor (the percentage of its nameplate capacity at which it operates on average), and pumped hydro development.
The challenge there is transmission: putting lines out into the middle of the back of beyond is expensive, and can constrain generation in a way that coal stations - sited in areas where HVDC lines have existed for decades - are not.
Of course, coal stations breaking down all the time is not helpful.