> Solar installations change the albedo of the planet

They do. And so does every single thing we build that's exposed to the outside - bulding, cars, even you when you are out and about.

The effect is minuscule unless we are turning the planet into Coruscant or this is a gray goo scenario.

We thought much the same when we introduced the automobile. Plastic for packaging purposes. Freon to help with the Carnot cycle in refrigerators. These things don't matter when you do them once or twice. But when you start doing them on an industrial scale it changes the equation from 'no effect' to 'unknown effect'. And unknown effect might be anything from negligible to planet wide catastrophe. It would be nice to know where we land before taking off.

Oceans warming up is a big thing, and local effects can be substantial even if global average change is negligible.

>The effect is miniscule //

The effect of a human on the planet is miniscule, but we're still in the bad state we are.

We're looking at covering the planet in solar panels, worth considering how the albedo changes will effect things on a planetary scale.

Isn't increasing the albedo cooling the planet down?

Yes, an increase in reflectivity would cool the planet down. But solar panels actually absorb a lot more than they reflect (they would have to). The ideal solar panel would be utterly black.

Ah, yes, that makes sense. The reflective cover they have made me think they reflected more than they absorbed (which, yes, doesn't make sense).