As the price of solar continues to drop worldwide, increasingly the overall electricity cost structure is determined by grid costs.
In the USA, the average transmission cost is around $30/MWh. The average cost of installing utility-scale solar farms happens to be around $30/MWh too, but this is dropping rapidly while grid costs are creeping upward. In the future at $10/MWh solar cost, which we're on track for hitting about 10 years from now, the traditional grid will be 75% of the total price of electricity. If solar gets to $3/MWh, then grid costs are 90% of the total. At a certain point more and more of solar power production will be situated closer to the load to delete as much of the grid costs as possible.
Energy-intensive industry will concentrate in regions with high insolation. Europe won't be a beneficiary of this boom. However, all other uses of electricity will become increasingly localized, irrespective of local insolation.m
There is no fundamental reason why we need to have a traditional grid with high voltage lines, transformers, substations, administrative bureaucracy, wildfire risk, storm risk, terrorism & cybersecurity risk, etc. Having this type of electricity distribution apparatus has been the optimal design because of the nature of legacy power plant technology, but it won't be with solar because solar is the only type of power source that can be practically scaled down to small installations and put in the middle of cities and towns, while being integrated into buildings and serving dual purpose as the roofing exterior material.
This is hugely bullish for Solar Roof in my opinion, because if so then the importance of wind and utility-scale solar will diminish while putting solar on buildings will be the most economical option.