Volts · David Roberts

How to make rooftop solar power as cheap in the US as it is in Australia

January 28, 2026·1 hr 8 min·5 clips

A Daly City inspector rejected a solar permit because the city's own website had the wrong property line on its map.

The premise is grim. Roberts starts with a U.S. residential solar market where federal tax credits are gone, net metering is weakening, tariffs raise prices, and batteries can add necessary cost. So the practical question is cost reduction. Australia is the comparison because U.S. rooftop solar and battery systems are described as effectively three times as expensive, mostly because of paperwork tax. The problem is not panels. It is the local, neighborhood, and utility-facing process that can turn a small clean-energy system into a custom infrastructure negotiation. The fix gets refreshingly specific. The center is flexible interconnection, where a utility can ask a customer to reduce exports during a known congestion window instead of requiring a massive upgrade first. California is the test case. The example is August between three and five in the afternoon, when the customer agrees in advance to set the smart inverter for lower exports. Roberts slows the mechanism down. Is the customer accepting one curtailment period, or giving the utility broad permission to dial back the system whenever needed? The answer is intentionally plain. The current arrangement is tied to a specified period. A more advanced version would let the utility use finer control within limits. That matters because forecasts are rough. Utilities plan conservatively when they do not know the weather, local demand, or how many people on a block will be away. Less guessing means less curtailment. The guest's claim, as Roberts gives it room, is that finer control and batteries can reduce curtailment and lower system costs for everyone. The closing phrase is the agenda: the make-it-cheap agenda, a dry but handy name for replacing rooftop solar's paperwork drag with repeatable procedures and grid services.

As heard by us

A concrete look at why U.S. rooftop solar costs so much more than Australia's, and how smarter interconnection rules could help.

Rooftop solar's U.S. affordability problem is framed here as a paperwork and grid-access problem as much as a hardware problem. David Roberts sets up a rough moment for residential solar and batteries: federal tax credits gone, net metering under pressure, tariffs raising costs,…

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

When you want the Australia comparison behind U.S. rooftop solar costs and the paperwork tax.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Volts