Avoiding line loss is one. That's minimized by using high-voltage lines, but I had one of those come down near me in a windstorm recently. Dangerous.
Which brings me to my second point of robustness. Two things have been interrupting power to homes lately: weather disasters and terror attacks. I'd really like to see a mixture of solar homes and microgrids densely embedded throughout the country. This would provide communications and medical power in emergencies to neighborhoods. Puerto Rico experienced this after Maria. When the grid for the whole island went down, a solar-equipped town center kept communications, lights, and medical equipment going. They have now completed a town-sized solar microgrid which will be hurricane-proof. We should emulate this and be less dependent on power lines, substations, and utility-scale power plants. Especially with increased storm and terror activity.
Power grids are highly stressed on summer days, with huge demand for air conditioning. This demand will rise. When the Pacific Northwest had its excruciating 100F+ heat wave, almost no one there had AC because they had never before needed it. They're buying AC now. The increasing severity and frequency of heat waves will lead to much more installed AC. My old neighborhood used to have transformers blow all the time in summer. If a percentage of houses in an area are not drawing on the grid or even adding to the grid, transformers won't blow. More robustness.
Individual utilities keep track of how much power is supplied thru net metering of solar homes, via individual home billing. I don't know if anyone is compiling national figures on that. It's easier to gather stats on production by utility-scale projects. But small-scale solar will be a bigger player in power production over time.
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