If you "lack the skill to install" it yourself, then you don't get to complain about "very greedy middlemen." If labor really WERE super expensive and they were greedy, then you could afford to learn the skills and install yourself. Nah, don't expect labor costs to be free or expect labor to be paid below a livable wage. Or heck, don't expect labor which is more skilled than you are to be paid less than you are.

But this is an important point: residential solar will always be fairly expensive due to labor costs. As module and other hardware costs reduce, it'll make sense to use the very highest efficiency cells, tracking systems (provided they're simple to install), etc.

But I think utility and commercial scale solar will dominate. Someone will eventually get really good at installing solar farms a gigawatt at a time with a highly automated system. Think of the harvesting and planting machines we use in agriculture. Or the machines used to lay railroads automatically. When this happens, utility solar at the interconnection point will drop well below 1 cent per kWh in sunny locations, and transport costs will dominate. Which has some interesting implications.

You're only considering grid tie when you say that a system won't really pay for itself in ten years. For off grid solar there are a number of places (example: very rural parts of ID and WA) where it might cost $40,000 to extend code compliant grid electricity from the nearest road to a new bare land property. And that is before you pay any monthly bills for ten years. Versus spending $35,000 one time on a big ground mounted solar system, charge controllers and a set of Tesla power wall 2 for battery storage.

Cost and efficiency also hugely impacts developing nation solar (most of rural Africa) where no grid whatsoever currently exists.

Interestingly, this applies on very small scales too. For certain street furniture like parking meters etc. it can be cheaper to install solar and a battery than to dig a cable.

In terms of city government unionized labor salaries and equipment cost, or hiring a contractor cost, it can be VERY expensive per meter to dig up an existing concrete sidewalk/curb and road to run code compliant AC electrical to a parking meter. Or something like a bus stop arrival time sign. Looking at $20,000 per unit in some cases, or more. And then there's the question of where do you get the AC power from in a built up downtown type area, you can't just tap into the nearest building, it usually involves dealing with the electrical grid for the streetlight system which was not designed to support thousands of small accessory loads hanging off it.