Incentives designed to make rooftop solar feasible for a wider range of consumers are under attack nationwide, threatening new solar development as well as the consumers that already have rooftop panels. The staunchest opponents? Utilities who say, despite a growing body of research to the contrary, that rooftop solar hurts other ratepayers and their bottom lines.

In particular, utilities have railed against net metering policies that require them to provide credits to customers that produce energy from their own solar arrays. Those programs, and other key incentives supporting rooftop solar, are at the center of fierce debates in several states -- notably in Arizona, on former U.S. Rep. Barry Goldwater Jr.’s home turf.

Arizona’s fraught energy policy landscape sprouted the advocacy group Tell Utilities Solar won’t be Killed, or TUSK, in 2013. The group is led by Goldwater and now active in more than a dozen states facing similar discord. Goldwater spoke with ILSR’s Director of Energy Democracy, John Farrell, in May 2016 about solar energy as a source of freedom and the threat from incumbent monopoly utilities.