Green energy solutions?

Why electricity utility companies do not focus on providing renewable energy solutions directly on people's houses over large scale installations?

• Installing solar panels on roofs instead of building big schemes and transmission lines. OK, this seems trivial, someone has to have been thinking about this. If  utility  companies installed renewable solutions on people's homes, instead of constructing gigantic utility generation stations, so still owning the infrastructure and selling energy to the customers, would that be a viable business model? Could this system work? Would this  not create lots of clean energy innovation, improve coverage, distribute generation,etc...

• Answer:

  This question somehow made me remember the person thinking 9 woman can deliver 1 baby in a month. In PV business there is a simple saying: "A free-field is the perfect rooftop." Rooftop PV is hard. It is so hard, sometimes it is not possible to build considering commercial, technical factors. Especially family houses where rooftops are not designed flat. Some reasons below: 1) Roof material may not be applicable for module holding structure. 2) Roof geometry might not allow good sun angle over a year. 3) Roofs are on houses, houses are near other buildings, thus many possibilities for near shading objects. Free field plant, though, is usually simple: 1) Ground is usually near flat so you can choose the angle of modules and have options to reach perfect installed capacity-produced energy balance a.k.a IRR. (Except countries like Japan) 2) Mounting racks may be installed with simple piles rammed in ground. 3) Any shading object near can be cut. These are usually some trees in the middle of nowhere. Cutting trees for renewable might sound like bombing for freedom, however in comparison a PV plant has more contribution to the nature. I see it, as if replacing trees with their "robot counterparts". (Sorry no references but I guess you can google this) Let's also not forget economies of scale. And finally big utilities have no possibility to use resources on many small projects. A project is a project. From workload perspective there is not much difference between big or small project. These all are the reasons why usually rooftop incentives are much higher than free field.