Not really, or at least, they don't have any say in that.
In the following hypothetical, (I'm assuming that ALL homes on a given isolated grid, also have solar assistance). It won't happen in real life, but this is just for the sake of this explanation.
If ONE home chooses to stop using ALL possible power during a peak demand interval, AND, no-one else does that, THEN, their system has the
*potential* (owing to light and battery power availability) to supply its full capability into the grid, and get paid for their bit. This is of course assuming the remaining homes have a net negative generation, that is, even accounting for THEIR own solar systems, they still use MORE than what they generate themselves. In other words, they still draw something from the grid.If ALL solar homes had the same idea (power off everything and let their solar systems pump power into the grid), then, NO-ONE would pumping power into the grid - their controllers simply will NOT let it. There are safety limits built in that prevent over voltage from happening. This entirely debunks the "solar overloads the wiring" statement, as well as the amount of copper.
It depends. Although the "grid" operates as a large-scale entity, it does indeed have some localised effects. And it NEEDS this, because even though the "grid" operates with some self-regulation as far as voltage goes (power stations vary up and down according to demand, and voltage is a good indicator of what the load is. There are quite high variations on the local level, because one suburb may have no air-cons, and the next door suburb may have them all. And the larger scale grid feeds them both. To ensure YOUR grid voltage stays within "acceptable" limits, there are local transformers that change taps to offer some control for this.
In the hypothetical that solar systems feed "too much" power into the grid (they won't, but let's say they do anyway), the transformer will switch to account for that, so less comes from the larger scale grid, and the local solars can supply a chunk of power.
This will not magically "stress" the copper, because the copper isn't carrying any more current that it's capable of ANYWAY.
Firstly, there is no "other way". Due to normal losses in copper, YOUR solar system has MOST effect closest to you, and the LEAST effect furthest away from you. The change YOUR solar box has on the whole is rather local.
Again, only locally, AND if the box lets it. If the grid voltage is ALREADY high, YOUR system will NOT push bucketloads of power into the grid.
:-) Congratulations, you've just turned a positive into a negative. What you're saying is a GOOD thing, and does not require "fixing". It's also the cheapest and most effective way of addressing load.
Take the far southern end of Victoria for instance. They're at the end of a long copper line, ant the wrong end of the power generation side, so there are significant losses. They have increasing peaks loads due to air cons and huge TV sets. Increasing copper would help, but ultimately, no-one is going to pay millions so a tiny town can have air cons and TV sets. What they're doing now, is using wind power to supplement peak power. So that droop due to load goes away, because the wind generators are taking up the slack. This is a GOOD thing. Of course, they want to whine about the noise, and they have every right to do that. The easiest way to fix that is to get THEM and THEM ALONE to pay the millions or billions for the copper upgrades. As long as everyone else doesn't have to pay, I'm quite happy to let them have that.
That theory would fail, mainly because it's these huge peaks (aircons) that need LOTS of power generation over short periods. Generating this class of power is expensive, but in above example, it's still cheaper than copper. Again, this is for long haul copper, local systems will see no (worthwhile) gain in copper upgrades.