Green Mountain Energy Co. will announce today a program to attract solar energy customers by buying the electricity generated from home arrays at retail rates.
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Sometimes home solar panels generate more juice than a customer can use at the moment. The extra electricity flows into the grid.

And sometimes home solar panels don't make enough juice to meet a household's use at that moment, and a customer must buy electricity from the grid.

Green Mountain customers can sell power to the retailer at the same price that the customers buy the power.

That deal is good for up to 500 kilowatt hours a month. If a customer sells more than that amount back to Green Mountain, the company will only pay half the retail price.

"In my mind, it would be a tragedy if anyone who had solar on their house wasn't a Green Mountain customer," said Paul Markovich, senior vice president for residential services at the company.

Green Mountain will offer solar customers a month-to-month, renewable electricity pricing plan. The price is around 14 cents now – higher than the market average – and could change each month.

So far, a couple of dozen customers have signed up for a pilot solar program with the company, Markovich said.

The deal represents a challenge to competitors on solar pricing.

Early adopters of solar panels always sold their power to the electricity company at retail rates because when the panels made extra power, the home meter simply ran backwards.

But the Texas Public Utility Commission ruled that every household should get a new meter that measures inflow separately from outflow.

The new meter allows electricity retailers to pay solar customers a different rate for the power, a rate closer to the wholesale price of electricity.