Accenture Research has found that distributed electricity generation, driven by residential solar, poses an ongoing threat to utility revenue and hosting capacity. Accenture warns that utilities will need to shift their investment spending toward encouraging distributed hosting capacity at the edge of the grid and better planning relative to network demand, to complement the growth in solar. Embracing this approach should reduce the utilities’ energy generation costs, as end-customers demand less electricity from the grid thanks to the increasing penetration of solar. The balancing act for utilities is in the grid, making sure that their distribution grids can accommodate the new dynamic. An electrical grid is built to handle a certain amount of electricity, typically called the ‘hosting capacity.’ Distributed…