Comment Evidence, please (Score 1) 488
Those who participate in net metering are selling surplus power when they have a surplus to sell, and buying power when they don't. It's rather absurd to say the power they purchase at night is "free," when in fact every single kilowatt-hour they purchase eats into the proceeds from their daytime power sales. If they are selling power at, say, a wholesale rate of $0.02 per kilowatt-hour, and buying power at a retail rate of $0.12 per kilowatt-hour, it massively eats into the proceeds from their daytime power sales.
If you were correct that every kilowatt-hour sold by a solar facility has to be "thrown away," or discharged into the ground, then you would also be correct that that's not a sustainable business model. But you present no evidence for this. Here I present evidence to the contrary:
A utility can look at the forecast for how sunny it will be, and then conservatively scale back production at its peaking plants and at its load-following plants, to minimize the amount of solar power that needs to be "thrown away."