Decades ago, there was a small, local company named Copper Cricket in Oregon that sold and installed rooftop solar water heaters which worked really well - despite the fact that the Willamette Valley, where most of the population lives, got something like only 3 months worth of cloudless days peer year (July, the month with the fewest cloudy days, has an average 40% cloud cover during the month).
This is pre-internet history, and I'm unable to find references, but when the company went out of business the rumor going around was that power companies were funding zoning lawsuits against Copper Cricket, and this eventually shut the company down.