Arizona Court Ruling Opens New Front In Rooftop Solar War With Utilities

Elon Musk, developer of PayPal, Tesla Motors and SpaceX, prides himself in disrupting business models of market incumbents.¹ With his investment in SolarCity, an installer of rooftop solar systems, he is challenging the electric utility industry, which has been fighting back (in many cases successfully) in state legislatures and before utility commissions across the country.² Earlier this year, when an Arizona utility raised fees on customers that install rooftop solar, SolarCity filed an antitrust suit in federal court alleging that the fees amounted to unlawful monopolization of (or attempt to monopolize) the market for providing electric power to end-use customers. With the string of Supreme Court decisions narrowing the scope of liability for monopolization, the legal prospects for SolarCity's Complaint were highly uncertain.³