Comment by missinglugnut

You're not making any sense. If things worked like you say, the industrial manufacturers would just put solar on their roofs, save a bunch of money, and that'd be the end of the story.

If rooftop solar power were so economically efficient, the manufacturing companies would get far more shareholder money lobbying for rooftop solar than utilities can make lobbying against it. But your conspiracy thinking doesn't account for this.

Heavy machinery uses dramatically more power than the roof space above it can produce. And you can't shut the factory down every time there is a cloud in the sky, so you need a utility hookup that can power the whole factory anyway.

The grid is the technically superior solution. That's why megacorps with capital and lobbying might keep willingly connecting to it.