By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent
What Happened: If you’ve ever doubted whether utilities fear that solar will put them out of business, read Sammy Roth’s excellent report in The Desert Sun, in which he
- Discovered that a public utility had an “oppo research” department to find dirt on the owner of Renova Energy, an outspoken critic of the utility, and
- Used ratepayer money to hire private investigators for this fishing expedition.
SolarWakeup’s View: Let’s get this out of the way first: If you’re not reading Sammy Roth in The Desert Sun regularly, what the heck is wrong with you? He covers solar in California as well as anyone I know, so bookmark him.
But even I was gobsmacked by his story yesterday, in which he reported that public utility Imperial Irrigation District (a utility about which Sammy wrote a superb series exposing corruption in its ranks – go figure) hired private investigators, using ratepayer funds, to investigate Vincent Battaglia, CEO of Renova Energy, the largest rooftop solar installer in IID’s service area.
Let that sink in for a moment.
Battaglia’s “sin” was to be critical of the utility for abruptly shutting down its net metering program, which of course made solar less attractive to homeowners. In other words, IID launched a direct attack on Battaglia’s – and other solar installers’ – livelihoods.
So…a public utility took the extraordinary step of trying to destroy Battaglia and his company with a concerted effort to dig up dirt on him – using public funds.
It takes a lot to shock me anymore, but this story took my breath away – and it is absolutely worth reading in its entirety (the link is below). But here’s my takeaway: The solar industry has the utilities running scared.
I’m sure many of you in our audience are saying, “Nice insight, Sherlock.” And I admit that’s probably obvious to most of us in the industry. But what’s different here is that the information is now out in the public, and if we can capitalize on this incident to mobilize the public on our side, that will be an enormous boon to the spread of solar to more places. Sammy deserves our thanks for exposing it – keep it up, my friend.
(Speaking of Sherlock Holmes, the private investigators hired by IID was the Baker Street Group, a tribute to the iconic detective’s residence at 221B Baker Street in London.)
(Oh, and if you’re interested in reading about the widespread corruption at IID, I can’t recommend Sammy’s series enough. There’s a link to it in the story below.)
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Public agency paid private investigators for ‘opposition research’ on local solar company