I can see from this other post that Dominion would never go along with this unless it was mandated. Although I believe Dominion is already violating state law.
Anyway regardless of Dominion's stance, here's the main idea.
Basically, Dominion would install & own the solar panels on your volunteered roof and you would receive a discount of say 5%-10% off your bill anytime your solar generation was not more than either the customer's consumption or a set figure in kW. The meter would still run backwards when your system was generating electricity.
I can tell you why this isn't already happening. Did you know that the number of people who can legally sell back their generated electricity to Dominion power is capped at maybe 1% (from very fuzzy memory) of all the number of customers in VA. Once that cap is exceeded, Dominion does not have to buy back power from co-generating customers. I believe it may also be a regional limitation, and I am not sure how to find out if the limit has been exceeded at a certain address. That limit was probably put in place to prevent Dominion from not 'losing' paying customers and therefore reducing it's golden goose egg profits.
So in addition to having to purchase & install any co-generating equipment at your own expense, you also don't know if you will be allowed to 'sell' the electricity back to Dominion. That and various 'local ordinances' prevent many including us from doing this.
Seems to me if Kaine was serious about energy & clean power that is good for the environment, he would drop the cap, but also create incentives (1) give Dominion an incentive to buy that power back by making it a discount on a bill - so they keep their 'paying' customers and (2) eliminating the expense to residences and businesses to install such a system (3) allow Dominion to 'write-off' a portion of the discounts they paid out to co-generators (this is like a double dip - since this is income they didn't make nor paid taxes on but they get a rebate for the discount).
Even with all this cheap, free co-generation I can see where Dominion would still balk, as it could no longer use the interest paid on the loans it used to build these new plants as write-offs on their income taxes. So they can either keep their loans, write-offs and coal plants or they could put their money where their mouth is and really do something about the environment.
It's seems like something could be done along these lines. I think this would earn Governor Kaine and the politicians real political capital if they were to get this program in place. The kind that gets them elected to other offices or re-elected. After all, Dominion can't vote.