&gt; Why should they pay retail?<p>Obviously under completely free-market conditions, they wouldn&#x27;t. But under those conditions, power companies would burn nothing but coal and nobody would have any solar. Coal is really cheap. Retail net metering is society actively meddling with the free market to mitigate a societal ill, and forcing big polluters to subsidize cleaner energy. I don&#x27;t see a problem with that.