Homeowner solar panels aren't really what we're focussing on. This is about utility scale.
Solar has been shown to be cheaper than ff in many places (over 30 countries:
http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Renewable_Infrastructure_Investment_Handbook.pdf) In Chile, new solar plants offer solar generated electricity at half the cost of natural gas. Globally, Bloomberg predicts that on average solar will be the cheapest way to produce energy overall (
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...-on-earth-look-skyward-as-coal-falls-to-solar).
It has been shown that the reason it isn't cheaper in many places is due to the excessive regulations on solar that lead to crippling soft costs. The trend of declining cost of solar is only going to continue as the technology improves, and people become more comfortable with the idea of solar power (right now, many solar utility deals tread new ground - which obviously makes them more expensive as they cannot use existing knowledge). The sooner we get on it, the more money the American govt and consumer will save.
Note how none of you anti-solar folk have been able to quote any real figures? It's because you have an ideological bias against renewable energy even when it makes more economic sense.
Solar and renewables aren't perfect, they still have issues (such as intermittency, although solar utility plant energy projections are 99% accurate). I'd still like to see them as part of a balanced grid with nuclear, but they are quickly becoming a better economic alternative to the fossil fuels that have been propped up by the government for almost a century. Time to do away with govt interference in the sector.
Agreed the grid is an issue. It's an infrastructure project that definitely needs looking into.
Thankfully, infrastructure improvement has bipartisan support. Lets see if that kind of bipartisan support will prove to be more powerful than the fossil fuel lobbies, who are fine with the grid how it is.