This is a tough and awkward problem, because accounting for the externalities of a "good thing" would curtail progress towards a good thing. Meanwhile, the exte

This is a tough and awkward problem, because accounting for the externalities of a "good thing" would curtail progress towards a good thing. Meanwhile, the externalities of bad things get a free pass. Ouch. The solutions are either very expensive, very counterproductive, or very unfair. The expensive solution is grid energy storage, where the utility installs a bunch of storage to time-shift some of the generation to better match the demand. The unfortunate aspect is that this is capital intensive, and most utilities are already loaded full of debt to pay for capex. This will probably result in the increase of rates billed to consumers, which is ironic, even if the grid is now providing a more complex service. The unfair solution is to legislate that onsite storage must accompany all residential distributed solar generation. This pushes the costs significantly higher, and forces homeowners to locally account for the added complexities of their green energy generation. But full suite of complications around other energy sources isn't priced into their cost. One counterproductive solution is to force market pricing on all consumption and generation. The revenue on residential solar generation would free-fall, because all of it in a particular area gets generated at a time when it's most plentiful. It wouldn't be worthwhile for a small player to generate it anymore. Another counterproductive, but simple solution, is to dump excess solar at the inverters at peak time, then run a bunch of natgas peakers in the evening once solar drops off. This is an environmentalist's nightmare, but takes no effort to execute.