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So one would not expect to see Barry Goldwater Jr., the very picture of modern conservatism and son of the 1964 Republican nominee for president, arguing passionately on behalf of solar energy customers. But there he was last fall, very publicly opposing a push by Arizona’s biggest utility to charge as much as $100 a month to people who put solar panels on their roofs…….

Similar conflicts are going on in California and Colorado, with many more to come. And as the issue pops up, conservatives are even joining forces with environmental groups. In Georgia, a Tea Party activist and the Sierra Club formed a “Green Tea Coalition.”

As a result, solar power is fast becoming one of the fracture lines dividing the conservative movement’s corporate and libertarian sides. ….

Utilities are working off of a business plan that’s 100 years old,” he said in an interview, “kind of like the typewriter and the bookstore.” On the website for his campaign, Tell Utilities Solar Won’t Be Killed, Mr. Goldwater, a former congressman, says, “Republicans want the freedom to make the best choice.”

He says conservatives are the original environmentalists, especially in the West. “They came out here and fell in love with the land,” he said, and added that his father used to tell him, “There’s more decency in one pine tree than you’ll find in most people.”….

He and others consider the utilities to be regulated monopolies whose rates are set by bureaucrats — the opposite of a free-market economy. In Georgia, Debbie Dooley, the national coordinator for Tea Party Patriots and a co-founder of the Green Tea Coalition, said the fact that some conservatives denounced the favorable treatment that solar power got from the federal government was immaterial.

“They neglect to mention billions of dollars that the fossil-fuel industries have received,” she said. “They cherry-pick their principles.”……

In Hawaii, where high electricity costs have led to enormous private investment in rooftop solar panels, State Representative Cynthia Thielen, a Republican, in cooperation with the local Sierra Club chapter, has been battling Hawaiian Electric over policies that she says discourage adoption of solar power. Like other utilities, Hawaiian Electric has argued that the boon in solar has put a strain on the grid and could even cause safety problems……http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/26/us/politics/fissures-in-gop-as-some-conservatives-embrace-renewable-energy.html