Residential solar was a terrible idea. It only works during the day, it is hard to store, and you can't efficiently transport it to where there is demand without a major overhaul of the grid.

I guess you could pump seawater to affluent neighborhoods for processing, but then you need to rethink drinking water distribution.

It would have made so much more sense to just build nuclear plants along side desalination plants, but the oil industry convinced everyone that nuclear is a scary boogie monster.