Found this interesting article on solar power and energy management. It's about California but has pretty clear applications to most of the rest of the country.
http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-fi-electricity-solar/
To summarize the major points:
a) California's renewable energy industry is booming. Solar power is as cheap as natural gas and 27+% of the state's power is currently renewable.
b) California produces so much electricity from this boom that they send excess power to neighboring states to avoid overloading the grid. Market economics means the state often has to pay others to take our excess energy. That's taxpayer money.
c) When excess energy is produced, solar plants are often shut down before natural gas or nuclear ones because they're much simpler and cheaper to start and stop. Other states do the same, so greenhouse gas emissions aren't being cut as much as they could be.
d) Despite this energy glut, utility companies continue to build fossil fuel plants because they're subsidized to the point of profit by the state. Most plants don't operate anywhere near capacity.
So the good news is that solar power is more prolific and affordable than ever, but the benefits are being severely crippled by conflicting energy policies and bad subsidies.