Story

While this one singles out cheap natural gas, power companies across the board are struggling with distributed solar. In political actions funded by the Koch brothers, they're coming up with every off-the-wall plan they can. Scare tactics about their death spiral, aimed at convincing regulatory agencies to allow them to stop net-metering, add an extra fee for solar-power-producing homes, or otherwise asking the government to guarantee them a fixed amount of revenue, even as they provide less and less power:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/utilities-sensing-threat-put-squeeze-on-booming-solar-roof-industry/2015/03/07/2d916f88-c1c9-11e4-ad5c-3b8ce89f1b89_story.html

http://midwestenergynews.com/2015/07/30/missouri-regulators-looking-into-decoupling-utility-revenues-and-profits/

http://www.npr.org/2015/01/03/374737086/utilities-fight-for-revenue-lost-to-solar-power

This mess looks to play out like Bank Bailout... Semi-governmental private corporations, who give the profits they make to their investors, yet can expect the government to protect them from any losses when things go the other way.

To their credit, state regulators have been overwhelmingly rejecting their proposals pretty universally thus far, and not allowing them to essentially print their own money.

There is some indication that the death sprial is a myth, and this will all just mean slightly lower profits than they've come to expect:

http://cleantechnica.com/2014/06/24/will-renewable-energy-cause-utility-death-spiral/