From a utility perspective, you may be right. Given the existence of an already-extant fossil fuel distribution infrastructure, I could see it being simpler.
But that said, the "amount of space used" isn't a great metric to compare the two, since the space used by solar is very different and can overlap with space used for other things.
Getting away from utilities, solar is something that individual people can install on their properties to electrify their own little baby power grid, feeding back to the wider grid or not. This will effect the demand curve in the aggregate, leaving utilities to cover the difference somehow. With load dropping to zero or near-zero during sunlight hours, and increasing in the off-peak and winter hours, they have to consider options to balance the grid that aren't appropriate for fossil fuel plants.
The niche that gas peaker plants fill is rapidly going away as battery technology improves. I think the calculus, in ten or so years, is going to be that it'll be "a lot simpler, easier to buy a plot of industrial zoned land, and stick a" battery farm on it to harvest surplus power during the daylight/windy hours and discharge it at other times.
I expect that demand for gas is going to drop precipitously in that situation, meaning that the whole fossil fuel distribution network may struggle, and prices will go up, further motivating distributed generation. And utilities are going to want to prepare for that earlier rather than later.