This is fine and all, but each individual having a solar panel introduces a lot of issues.<p>Your energy bill is about 1/4 or 1/3rd distribution. As you take less power from the grid because of the solar on your roof, that proportion grows larger and larger.<p>At the same time, the power company makes less money off of you, because you are using less power. Therefore, they have less money to invest in distribution, which means they must increase distribution fees further to stay a going concern. This is to say nothing of the ballooning costs of distribution in general (nimbyism, permitting fees, can't build jack shit in this country for no good reason etc.).<p>Therefore: in the hypothetical where everyone has solar rooftops, we all effectively pay the grid operator <i>only</i> for dirty/offpeak power. This makes the grid operators look bad to everyone (they're using dirty power, aren't we trying to fight climate change!? Why is my electricity bill astronomical, even though I only use a tiny bit of power!?) and puts them in an impossible situation -- they're stuck between capped profits, creating expensive clean power at off-peak hours, and limited cash in general, since their expensive power plants are dormant half the time. Yet they still must deliver power to their customers, 24/7.<p>People have to have 24/7 electricity, even though the solar on their house does not cover them 24/7. It's illegal to sell a house that is not connected to the grid in most areas. Therefore, consumers must pay for the <i>option</i> of using electricity in off-peak hours. Everyone will be upset. The grid operator, who is constantly thrashed by politicians who insist on their using clean power, their customers who are enraged at them for the seemingly exorbitant electric bills (which are mostly distribution).<p>The upside is that the grid is more resilient, but as others have mentioned, only if significant investments in local distribution are made (i.e. the ability to very dynamically/granularly pump power back up, from house to grid). Which is a big capital investment that the grid operators will not be able to afford.<p>All this is downstream of the fact that it is hugely inefficient to put a ton of tiny solar panels all over the place, where they cannot be installed, cleaned, maintained, replaced cheaply. It's just way less expensive per watt to put a bunch of solar panels in one spot on cheap land in the desert and pipe it through the existing distribution network.<p>Everyone <i>will</i> pay for that resilience, in their electric bill, one way or another.