One reason I'm not confident in solar is there are a lot of small-scale installations, but fewer large ones. If the economics of it are so great, you'd think economies of scale and better locations would make it more cost effective than small installations. My theory about what's going on is there are tax breaks for small scale operators that make it marginally profitable on paper.
That makes sense; power utilities have lots of money, and they're going to build new plants to provide power, that's their job. As solar power becomes cheaper relative to other options and has intangible benefits too, it will increasingly become the power plant of choice. I'm not sure the efficiencies of small vs. large solar even enter into the calculus. The transmission lines are a known part of the picture and largely already exist.
Small scale costs slightly more due to economies of scale, but it also distributes the power sources and so cuts transmission costs and adds redundancy.
Overall, as PV panel prices continue to trend downwards, we'll see less big installation in sunny places (which originally were the only ones that made financial sense) to more, smaller installs as other costs come to dominate the equations.
This must be passing a tipping point. I live in a very nondescript part of Ohio and there are about 12,000 acres of land incorporated into three different solar farms proposed, approved or under construction within 20 miles of my home.
