SolarCity just changed the rules of the game in the utility business.
On Monday, the San Mateo,
Last Thursday, approved a new pricing plan designed to punish customers who choose to go solar. Under the new plan, SRP customers who generate their own power have to pay additional 'distribution charges' and 'demand charges' that other SRP customers do not. These discriminatory penalties add up to hundreds of dollars per year, and make a competitive rooftop solar business impossible within SRP territory . . . SRP has sabotaged the ability of Arizona consumers to make this choice if they happen to live in SRP territory. We can already see the intended effects: After the effective date of SRP’s new plan (December 8 of last year), applications for rooftop solar in SRP territory fell by 96%.
The last sentence is worth repeating: the change in SRP's rates resulted in a 96% reduction in new rooftop solar applications. Long ago, I recognized that the battle between distributed power companies like SolarCity and incumbent utilities like SRP would eventually end up in a courtroom. Indeed, I have spent the past six months writing a book on this very subject.
This is the first lawsuit. It is unlikely to be the last. If SolarCity is lucky, it will not file the next lawsuit. The U.S. Department of Justice's antitrust division will do so.
The sooner, the better.
UPDATE
Boies, Schiller & Flexner, LLP is representing SolarCity. BSF is best known as the home to David Boies, the superstar trial lawyer who seems to be involved in every high-profile lawsuit there is. However, Donald Flexner, the managing partner of BSF, is the true antitrust powerhouse at the firm. Flexner is to antitrust law what Boies is to trial advocacy. If he cannot win a dispute, nobody can.
