That's the reason. Overall, family homes don't make for very safe or efficient power plants.

Very efficient for distribution though which is expensive (check your utility bill).

Don't need to run power lines for hundreds of miles if you have a generator on your roof.

> Don't need to run power lines for hundreds of miles if you have a generator on your roof.

To remove the need for power lines, you also need batteries, and enough solar to make it through winter.

Even if the power lines are already a given and you're just looking at the operational cost, home solar still uses them a lot to send power back. Peak usage hours are in the evening when the sun is already down.

Also, home solar is still subsidized, even in Arizona where it makes the most natural sense. I doubt it'd be a thing otherwise, even if the only alternative were utility solar. But I understand the argument that pollution is an overdue emergency and any clean energy is better than nothing.

I believe the opposite is true. You still need these hundreds of miles of power line to get you the power during the night or cloudy days. And it is actually more expensive to handle such network because the power distribution is unpredictable and one need to size the network for the worst case.