something to consider
when people decide to go solar they also tend to have a big look at thier consumption and user habits.
when we made the move we also dropped our consumption from an average og of 19units per day down to 9. we can go as low as 6 if the whole family makes an effort.
just adding a massive skylight over the middle of the house has helped.
even though we live in kalgoorlie, after reinsulating the entire outerskin of the house means that our evap aircon only gets partial use on a hot day.
In my business I see new houses getting finished and always have a sticky beak at the ratings and power requirements of the refrigerated boxes outside.
a unit that will cool 1 large room used 2-3times the power that my evap uses for the entire house. and even small houses have 2 or 3 of the units sitting on blocks around the house.
If you wanna get whinny and blame us solar producers, have a look at what your doing first.
Ive even seen houses here that have shadecloth and trickle pipe covers ,like big coolgardie safes,OVER their refrigerated a/c units to stop them tripping out on days over40 degC
at our house we planted trees

Just a government dangled carrot to retards to try and find a better alternative to upgrading and stp overloading of there power stations and electricity.
Don't be fooled.

We live in a overpriced consumer market and sales is good

Electricity consumption has been reducing in Australia over recent years. This is the first time in history since electrification began over 100 years ago this has happened. Personally we have reduced our consumption to just over 10 kw/h a day. This is in a unit with two people and with no gas or solar heating plus an older plasma TV. This is also over winter where we used our electric heater a bit.

Changing our fridge to a very energy efficient Electrolux fridge reduced our electricty consumtion dramitically and our bills went down from over $500 a quarter to about $320 now. It seems a real shame Electrolux won't make these fridges here anymore as when we shopped for a new fridge the Australian made Electrolux was better than any of the cheap fridges coming out of Korea or other places.

To say solar stops working when the sun goes down is only partially true. On the east coast at least, surplus power generated during the day is used in the Snowy Mountains Hydro system to pump water to upstream dams. This water is released at night to generate electricity. In the future electric cars will become more common. Its only a matter of time before these cars have the smarts to collect cheap solar power during the day or cheap off peak power in the middle of the night and then sell that power to the grid during the peak hours.

If the grid can be made in the consumer's favour by being smart enough to buy cheap power and then sell expensive power, then it will be worthwhile to stay on the grid. However if this is blocked by the rip offs as will probably be the case, the best bet is to cut yourself off the grid in the future if possible.