[kelnos]

Installing solar on residential and commercial rooftops and parking lots is a fantastically inefficient use of time when compared to building utility-scale solar farms. The per-install fixed costs are a lot larger than you'd expect. Consider that, to reduce my own home's draw on the grid to more or less nothing, I'd have to spend $35k (before government incentives, so more like $23k) on a 4kW solar install plus battery storage. As a part of a utility-scale build-out, that $23k will go a lot farther.

We already have a ton of experience transporting electricity over large distances. Losses are not zero, but are not significant enough to matter (2-3%, usually).

Damage to desert ecosystems is a very important concern. I'm not sure how to solve that. But if an alternative is we fall further behind on saving our planet, the desert ecosystems will suffer there, as well.

Overall, I think we should be doing and encouraging both. Local generation is great, but we still need centralized generation.