Demand for electricity is only going to go UP so to meet that demand utility companies will either have to build new plants or buy power from someone else. Citizenre et al = "someone else". In effect these alternative energy companies offset the long-term capital expenditures that utility companies pay to satify their customers.

Most utility companies would rather be distributors rather than generators anyway. That is, they charge the players a monthly fee to connect to the grid, and let someone else move power across their grid. "Commercial" solar installations pay a monthly connection fee while, at the moment, "residential" solar installations don't and that raises a red flag with me for this kind of scheme. It would take a very small change in policy to declare a scheme like Citizenre's a commercial solar enterprise and start billing the homeowners for access to the grid. That could blow their business model all to smithereens, leaving the company bankrupt and the homeowners with obsolete grid-tied solar systems on their roofs that they can't legally keep connected to the grid.