The question is how long-term transmission costs will look. If cities won't be able to self-generate their own electricity, then the electricity has to come fro

The question is how long-term transmission costs will look. If cities won't be able to self-generate their own electricity, then the electricity has to come from somewhere. Currently we assume that it'll have to come from a centralized generation plant, but why? Hypothetically, if the capex to install PV is low enough, and the transmission costs are low enough, then you could build a type of decentralized generator where suburban and rural generation feeds urban demand. There's early work being done on "smart grids" which enable this pattern, but I could imagine a future company that markets to a private homeowner, one who already had sufficient generation for their own needs, with the offer of upgrading their private PV in exchange for most of the generation profits.