You generally can not go from city water/sewage to on-prem for legal reasons. However, many are going on-prem with solar. I am going almost completely off-grid for cost and SLA requirements.
You mean there are fewer companies making large investments than smaller ones?
As someone who's been building an off-grid solar system this is largely the case. I've spent thousands on panels and batteries, my electricity bill is only a few hundred a month but we have frequent outages during storm season. It's definitely more of a feel good and control thing. If I consider the cost of running the electricity to our remote location, I'd probably barely break even in 10 years if I'm lucky.
I worked in a building during rolling blackouts in California. The Tesla Powerwall on the building was "screaming" (ultrasonic harmonics from piezo components) 24/7. The security guy actually came to get me to ask if the thing was going to explode.
Clearly, the building owner was load shifting and making quite a bit of money from it.
They shouldn't, though. If powerwalls are that great, it should be more cost effective to install giant banks of them in cheap warehouses outside major metros since you'll have economies of scale on installation and maintenance. Utilities are sorta getting into this game, but it's more common at the individual level, despite being more expensive.
This works only if the electrical grid has the ability to consume back your stored power. Most electrical grids in the US would have problems doing that.
For example, UCSD has their own generating facility; however, SDG&E was sufficiently backward that UCSD was unwilling to go through the grief necessary to put energy back into the grid. Therefore, UCSD only does load shifting or disconnects the campus from the grid during rolling blackouts.
Because of the poor energy grid transport, storage batteries make the most sense when you can consume the stored energy locally to minimize your grid consumption during high energy prices--ie. you have a high-rise office with lots of air conditioning or a manufacturing facility.
Luckily, it does work for most of the US, especially desert/arid areas.
> but I see fewer companies building collectors in places with cheap land and ample sun.
They are plentiful in Turkey and some southern EU countries like Greece/Croatia, I believe. Not sure about deployment in the US.
Generating solar for local use saves the cost of transport.
High-voltage line losses can be as low as 3% per 1,000 km. That should be easily offset by the better location and better angle/tracking.