&gt; What this is all about is the power companies are suddenly deciding they want to pay wholesale for excess power. Why should they pay wholesale?<p>The power companies (normally) have enough power to supply everyone; they buy that power at wholesale prices and sell it to the customer at retail prices.  So why, if they can always buy power at wholesale prices, should they deliberately pay retail prices instead?  Doing so increases their costs, which then potentially raises rates for others.<p>So, asking power companies to buy power back at retail rates amounts to having power customers pay to subsidize the solar power generated by other power customers.<p>Looking at it as a subsidy, though, suggests a useful way to bring it about.  Many power companies have a program where you can pay extra per kWh for &quot;green&quot; power, paying for the use of wind, solar, geothermal, hydroelectric, and other renewable zero-pollution power sources.  Why not use a program like that to allow customers to subsidize solar power if they want to, and use the resulting funds to pay customers higher-than-wholesale rates for solar power?