Yes.
I agree with everything you said. All I can say is that a house a block away from mine has a photovoltaic collector on its roof, and every time I walk past I can see the little display outside that shows how much electricity the house is using and how much it's feeding into the grid. It's happening fairly frequently now in California.
I might point out that I saw a similar kind of installation in rural Austria, where a few farms worked together to create a generator based on, I guess, wood waste. All the farmers contributed some of their wood waste. They generated electricity for themselves, for the nearby farms, and then exported--that is, sold--the surplus electricity. It turned out to be a very effective arrangement there, and provided that group of farmers with a second source of income.