Electricity is much more fragile than people realize. When you flip on a light switch the power to light up your room is being generated <i>instantly</i>. That&#x27;s the problem. Utilities do not have large batteries. Electricity is generated on demand and the utilities have to estimate exactly how much power they need to generate <i></i>ALL THE TIME<i></i>.<p>When a utility adds wind and solar to their portfolio they also have to hire experts to analyze the weather. These experts need to estimate how much power the wind and solar are going to provide <i>every day</i>. There are times when entire wind farms are shut off because they will be generating too much power! There are other times when they are shut off because of concern that the weather could damage them. This is not easy.<p>Imagine adding tens of thousands of tiny solar arrays to your grid and then having no knowledge of how well they are going to operate. You can&#x27;t possibly begin to estimate what the cloud cover is going to be like for all of these installations over your territory. You don&#x27;t know how well they are maintained. You don&#x27;t have any clue if they&#x27;re kept clean. You might not have the infrastructure to accept electricity back into the grid (substation upgrades are not cheap).<p>The grid would gladly accept your power if they knew it was safe to do so. The fact is that it isn&#x27;t. If too little power is generated, brownouts or blackouts occur. If too much is generated equipment is damaged and shit starts on fire.<p>What we need is a <i>SMART</i> grid. It does not exist yet. It will take many years. Large battery installations may be a good stop-gap. But to vilify the utilities is ignorance when you don&#x27;t really understand how the grid works.<p>edit: I actually know of a giant private wind farm that was built on the idea that they could sell access to it back to a utility. Unfortunately it has been sitting dormant for a couple years because the cost to get the backhaul to the windfarm was too much, and the private investor had no idea the windfarm couldn&#x27;t just be hooked up.