I can think of a few reasons why people would like to microgenerate, Think outside of your own country.

1. 1. Most countries central power supplies are inevitably unreliable due to one or more of the following,
   1. a. Weather (lightning, floods, landslides, extreme heat, bush/brush fires, cyclones/hurricanes, snow storms)
   2. b. Poor Maintenance of Polls and Wires or Trenches and Wires or outages to perform maintenance on the streets
   3. c. Poor Generation (coal shortages, strikes, fire/destruction, corrupt officials)
   4. d. Personal demands are greater than infrastructure can provide (see below)
2. 2. When hybrid-electric and eventually electric cars become popular and people want to charge their vehicles the current power grids of today will not be able to transport the required power loads over the current network for large populations of electric vechicles recharging. Either major work is done across all countries to double power generation and transport capacity or people drastically reduce the loads on the current power grids by doing micro-generation.
3. 3. The return on investment is according to wikipedia about 10 - 30 years depending on local energy prices. This gives an average of about 5% p/a which is definitely not throwing your money down the drain.
4. 4. Aside from solar panels a wind turbine on your house can generate considerable energy if you live in a windy area. Particular good at generating electricity during the big temperature deltas of the day (dawn and dusk)
5. 5. The grid may not service your location at all or well due to
   1. a. remote location
   2. b. failure to comply with a stupid requests like paying bills or jumping through some corporate hoops
6. 6. In some countries you can sell excess energy back to the grid (at varying prices depending on the demand). So if you're on holidays and your batteries are full, why not make a few bucks paying of your investment in home generation. Plus you've saved your government from having to build another power plant to service the continual demand for electric power (which they take from you in tax, or price increases, or council rates).
7. 7. The cost of climate change has been factored into your equation. Most countries won't remove their CO2 power plants until they've fallen to bits. If I reduce the demand on the furnaces then less coal will be used and less emissions will be produced. Maybe Sweden might not have any problems with a warmer climate but a lot of countries will be in deep trouble with storms, droughts, cyclones/hurriances, flooding, rise ocean levels etc...

Basically the way I see it that home or microgeneration is like a massive UPS device for my house. I have a big battery of batteries that keep everything running when all hell breaks loose in the world around me. I'll have to cut my consumption a bit when I get cut off from the grid but at least I'll have warm showers, TV, radio, lights etc... when various forms of armageddon strike down upon me. The eventual aim is to be personally energy independent home and for commuting purposes (say 20km each way per day).

When I read the title of this /. post I immediately thought.
Damn what an abuse of power, those Federal Agents should just go out an buy the mod chips for themselves, just like everyone else. Every now and then they have the occasional marijuana burn off, but you never see the porn raid or mod chip burn offs.