The current generation of solar cells has been around for less than ten years, which makes them fairly new, and they happen to be the cheapest source of electric power available, which makes them thoroughly viable. Australia's electricity companies will only invest in solar cells and wind farms as new power sources - even through they also have to invest in grid-scale storage to deal wit the fact that both are intermittent.
The Australia situation was that the mining interests were bribing the politicians to pressure the government to persuade the electricity companies to invest more in generating stations that would buy more of the stuff the miners extracted, and the electricity companies refused to invest in hardware that was going to lose them money. That particular government was booted out last year.
Advanced industrial countries are more subtle. The UK used to be one of them
And sometime you think you see it when it isn't there.
Not exactly a great role model.