If you've watched, read, or click baited the news these past few months, then it's likely you’re a subject matter expert on everything transgender bathroom related. While everyone has their opinion on that issue which is likely going to go down as the most influential societal movement since Martin Luther King Jr marched on Washington (sarcasm), there is another story not making headlines that may interest a great many of you who are either fans of the notion of personal sovereignty or you are mindful of climate change.

That issue is the war being waged by big utilities against solar energy and even more so individually owned and paid for solar panels. Currently in states like Florida and Arizona private citizens have more and more been discovering the enormous benefits of harnessing their own solar energy. Not only is the method of utilizing energy from the blistering sun, which is in no short supply in Arizona, cleaner than the use of fossil fuels to produce energy; it is also substantially more cost effective for the producer and even his neighbors. Here’s why.

When a homeowner’s panels harvest and transfer energy, they contribute to the collective power grid that is run by the utilities company. The company disseminates the energy among the rest of the community utilizing the grid and they are paid to do so. In short, utilities companies are getting paid for energy that they did not produce. In exchange for producing this energy surplus the homeowner is given credit towards his own energy costs and in some cases he receives refunds from the power company. This process is known as ‘Net Metering’. The issue cited by utilities companies is that due to the advancements in technology solar energy has become far more affordable and simple to install. The rise in solar homes has increased so exponentially that the utilities companies are seeing a loss in customers, thus a loss in revenue even though their production costs remain the same. Big utilities is on the path to becoming obsolete.

In the past utilities companies have attempted to lobby against solar by demanding higher costs be placed on the energy producers; not surprisingly these attempts failed spectacularly in legislation. What was surprising was the overwhelming support the solar homeowners received from Republican representatives. Now big utilities backed by the Koch Brothers has introduced a new campaign against the solar citizens. Companies have lobbied the utilities commissions to impose a surcharge of $50.00 on solar producers to ensure that they are paying their fair share to maintain the grid. This is a fixed rate regardless of how much or how little the citizen uses energy from the grid. Big utilities has threatened that if the solar citizens do no pay their fair share then the costs for non-solar households will have to go up in order to offset the cost. The board approved the notion and the solar citizens have protested it ever since.

So while the rest of the country argues over which bathroom a transgender person should use these solar citizens will continue their fight to maintain self-sufficiency and the continued advancement of clean energy for all of us.