I agree with some and respectfully disagree. My experience with decentralized solar at a residence (but in Alabama where we get enough sun to think about doing it):
1. You do have to do your homework to make sure it's worth it. And once you decide it's worth it, you have to do your homework to make you're not taken advantage of. Of course you have to wade through all the solar-saves-us-from-warmageddon bull crap. And even then you have to dig further to find real world numbers based on real world results for your area. Last but not least you have to do an analysis on your own power consumption needs to figure out if it's best for your needs. I.e. if both my wife and I still worked at the office and was raising 4 kids, I'd need more battery storage and inverter capacity to make real use of the solar power collected during the day to power the home at night (battery storage) when we consumed power running many appliances at once (inverter capacity). It wouldn't be worth it. You have to do all of that before you start taking bids from solar contractors so you know who's scamming you and who isn't.
2. I suggest doing it in phases like I did. My Phase I was a much smaller system than what I have now. I used it for a year to make sure it'd work like I expected in all seasons before adding onto it in what I call Phase II. That means in Phase I you have to position your solar panels in a way to have room for more later. And your inverters and batteries (if you get batteries) have to be stackable, allowing you to add more later.
3. Selling power to the grid should be treated as icing on the cake, not a necessary component in deciding if getting solar is financially worth it. States change their regulations going from being "net metering" to not doing net metering. Which is fine to me politically. I get that there are fees involved with keeping the grid up and being able to sell your power to others. But it would mess me up if I had depended on the grid sell. Alabama Power has always been not net metering, so from day one of planning for solar I knew not to depend on the grid sell. I had solar for 2 years before I started selling power to the grid (1 year after the upgrade) so I could study the results and make sure taking on the extra fees for selling solar was worth what I get for selling (4 cents per kWh). It's analogous to making sure a Costco membership fee is worth it by making sure the supposed savings is worth it. But that means from day one you have to choose an inverter(s) with the "zero report" or "no output" feature to turn off the grid sell until you're ready to sell power. Then if you do sell power like I've been doing, be ready to turn it off if the regulations change.
I figured that you would show up, here. ;-)
Your post is, of course, spot-on. I also figure that less than 1% of solar users are as savvy as you. The vast majority are just easy pickings for the solar con-man.
For people in-the-know, the government-run solar con-game is at least enabling systems to be purchased and somewhat subsidized by the racket.
My solar is really for long-term emergency with only a minor reduction in monthly power cost - at least, for now.