The opportunity is real but so is the engineering challenge. Unfortunately those engineering challenges are hard to explain in a test works as a sound bite.

This means that smart people who legitimately want to help will sound like sticks in the mud compared to "well, why don't they just..."

Imagine you're running a phone company, and there's a new fad. Every time it's sunny, your customers start calling random businesses halfway across the state to say "hey, it's sunny, isn't that cool?"

You would need to install more long distance lines, of course. But you'd also need to install more local switching equipment to handle that surge in demand.

But on cloudy days you don't need that equipment. Fewer calls you can bill, more equipment needed, rates have to go up.

The problems for an electric utility are similar. Grid-tied solar, if it becomes too popular, forces them to install more capacity in substations, more lines between them, and then to deal with the unpredictable effect it has on the supply-demand balance.

So, complaints about upgrading are not "oh no we need to buy the latest model of switches." It's an upgrade as in "we need to build a highway with exits and traffic control in order to make that possible."

It might be worth doing. (Burning fossils sucks.) But it really is expensive, and it's not laziness when utilities say that they can't do net metering for everyone. They literally can't.