SolarCity

Strengthening local ties in the middle of the desert

Approach

We engaged a public watchdog to look into the utility industry’s influence over several state public utility commissions and their regulators. In Arizona, Nevada, New York and even California, attempts to gut the residential solar industry were blocked.

Challenge

As more Americans installed solar panels on their roofs, many utilities began to see the trend as a direct threat to their monopoly dominance over electricity sales. The industry’s trade association wrote its infamous memo warning utilities that continued residential solar would create a “death spiral” for utilities’ dominance of the power industry. These powerful companies began to attack homeowners’ ability to sell power back to the grid at the same price as the utility sold them power. The residential rooftop installation asked Tigecomm to help.

Results

• In Arizona alone, the public scrutiny triggered by our efforts generated over 140 stories over 15 months. It even triggered a federal criminal probe into influence peddling on that state’s utility commission, and it forced the resignation of the commission’s chairwoman.
• In Nevada, the commissioner who attacked residential solar on behalf of the dominant utility had to resign when his conduct was exposed.
• SolarCity’s then-CEO Lydon Rives said that our efforts had saved his company half a billion dollars of market capitalization by blocking efforts by the utilities to effectively impose new taxes on solar homeowners in three states.