Thanks for your info John.

My first Engineering role, a (long!) time ago, was as an Electrical Meter hardware Engineer. All it does is measure the throughput Joules. Since those normally go from the grid to consumer, those are considered positive, so it counts those positively.

As is, when your solar goes to more than 100% of your needs, all they can do is monitor when the meter starts to go backwards, and record how many units backwards it goes, before it starts to go forwards again. On how this is accommodated by the grid, it would manifest as a slowing down of the fuel consumed to power the grid, leaving more fuel to be consumed later, hence why they call it energy "stored", it is technically energy supply stored. But they don't seem to have any means of separating out what was produced by consumers, vs what was produced by themselves.

They are obviously making a tidy profit selling energy created by the consumer back to the consumer for even 5 cents per kWh (The consumer got it for nothing per Joule), but the consequence of it being so undervalued, relative to what they normally supply, is that they maybe underestimate its effects by comparing in terms of revenue, whilst a Joule is a Joule, no matter which direction it goes in, and whether or not it was received for free :)

It wouldn't be good for utilities energy supply business, to admit it is losing territory to domestic and community solar, so I bet they will lobby in every way possible to prevent it being recognised until it can't be covered up any longer, meantime they will also be doing everything possible to sabotage solar, including GeoEngineering. We can see campaigns for that ramping up, there are US folk already seeding the atmosphere in Mexico, VC funded.