This is a thing in many places in the US as well. Building codes often require a residence to be connected to the grid. Even if you have enough solar to cover all of your electricity needs, the power companies will still charge you a monthly grid connection fee which has gone up in cost as more customers use solar.

My wife likes to go to antique stores and they always have a ton of CDs. We were in one yesterday and joked with each other about how we don’t even own a way to play optical media any more. Fortunately they also had a shelf full of old CD players. Unfortunately we live in a van and space is at a premium so owning a CD player isn’t an option for us at the moment.