[icelancer]

Western Washington is a great contrast. We get a decent amount of sun (despite the reputation), however, our electricity prices are insanely low due to close-proximity hydroelectric power.

As a result, solar is rarely cost effective even with subsidies, and basically never without them.

Doesn't mean people don't install it for various other reasons, but it serves as a good contrast to California despite similar political landscapes.

[hvb2]

Which is perfectly fine? You're just using what's abundant to you? And even better, hydro has the ability to control how much it generates. You have a surplus? Let less water flow through the turbines. So it can regulate, something solar can't do, it needs batteries to do that.

The one big upside that I haven't seen mentioned is that rooftop solar is local. So what I overproduce doesn't go on the big grid, it's probably consumed by my neighbor or someone in my street.

All those big power plants, and big consumers of electricity (because they're switching from their current source), will lead to net congestion where you need to decide if you want to increase net capacity... Which is slow and $$$

[icelancer]

If I go solar, which seems likely, I will definitely not be sending it back to the grid since I don't think that's something that scales well (8-bit guy talks about it on YouTube and it's persuasive).

I'll be using a local / non-grid-tied system with Ecoflow batteries and a smart panel or transfer switch of some sort. IMO this is the best way to go when solar is non-competitive in terms of selling electricity back - also significantly more robust against disasters, since grid-tied systems do not work when the grid is down (something consumers tend to gloss over or be ignorant of) due to safety regulations.