They are not rare. It is the fastest growing energy production mode and is growing faster every year.

Residential installations lag behind the commercial due to installation costs, but they are blowing up as well. I can walk around my neighborhood and see a couple dozen homes with it.

It's also highly regional. The further south in the northern hemisphere the more common.

Where I live, power companies successfully lobbied to charge a minimum fee to people using a grid-tied system (as opposed to off-grid). So now a bill that might have been lowered to $9.00 will cost the minimum fee of $30.00 (actual example). You might say, that $30.00 is still a very low power bill but how long will it take before that starts going up? They are also lobbying to buy power from homeowners for less than they charge homeowners. This was a huge turn-off for me considering the high cost of installation. When I asked the solar installer about off-grid installations, he said they weren't allowed to offer those. Not sure why but got the impression it was a government thing and not a company thing. Not sure.

Here in Canada prices have stayed stubbornly high. It's the Canadian way.

I have panels that I bought for under $0.50/watt that they were clearing out at the local wholesaler years ago. Haven't been able to find anything even near that price range since, and I'm an electrician with access to wholesale pricing.

I have found some decent prices recently but they're all on full pallet lots. So you need to be a business dedicated to solar installs to get a fair price, and those businesses obviously don't pass the savings on as that's not the Canadian way.

Batteries are an even worse situation! If you live here and want storage, I hope you like lead-acid.