Some businesses are attempting to shut down rooftop solar energy instead of combating climate change. To protect their business model from new technologies that could lower the demand for electricity in America’s oldest markets—where the majority of power plants are still in operation today—Florida Power & Light does precisely this.”
In Florida, rooftop solar power generation is a growing industry that could reduce profits for electric companies. This new energy backbone could be detrimental to Florida Power & Light’s (FPL) current business model, which is based on selling fuel overheads like coal or natural gas plants do. FPL lobbied state lawmakers with records obtained by the Miami Herald and Floodlight for legislation they asked them to hand-deliver.
Sen. Jennifer Bradley of the state of Florida, who sponsored Florida Power & Light’s top-priority bill in 2020, was a close ally. The bill would make it harder for businesses and homeowners across the nation who have installed rooftop solar panels to offset costs by forbidding them from selling excess power back onto the FPL grid at full retail price through a practice known as net metering.
A bill drafted by the Florida Senate was forwarded to DLG Bradley in November for review. The FPL lobbyist drafted this legislation, and after observing how well-written our language was to keep up with the current events at every level of government, they gave $10K to her political advisory group! In fact, State Representative Lawrence McClure introduced his version exactly one month ago, sans any alterations.
Less than 1% of Florida’s over 8 million customers—roughly 90,000—sell their excess energy back to utilities. This figure does not account for the thousands of people who are currently in line to install solar panels. But this has led to a major increase in rooftop solar installation in recent years, and Florida Power and Light—whose largest utility has 5.5 million customers (65%), followed by Duke Energy with 2 million, TECO with 800k, and numerous other smaller utility companies—is advocating legislation that could severely limit these gains.
One more example of how utilities attempt to keep their monopoly on the electricity market is the opposition to net metering. Their argument that this bill will ruin the industry is unfounded, according to Will Giese, director of the Solar Energy Industries Association, who also notes that under the current regulations, consumers are still free to select the energy source that best suits their needs as long as they are satisfied with the options their provider provides.
The Florida Public Service Commission has been receiving proposals from power companies on how they expect rooftop solar will affect their bottom line. According to one utility company, FPL, profits from this new technology known as “distributed renewable energy” could be threatened by $700 million between 2019 and 2025, meaning that they would have to make less money. However, scientists argue that we need these cleaner sources of electricity because of climate change.
Chris McGrath, a representative for Florida Power and Light, stated that while the company is not opposed to net metering, it does think the current rule should be reviewed. He argued that customers with roofs facing the sun are supported by other customers who continue to have purchasing power and pay to maintain the power grid.
“We basically accept roof sun oriented clients ought to pay the full expense of this venture,” McGrath said.
A long, political fight
The bill represents just one side of a protracted battle against the arrangement. Florida Power and Light has likely been the largest advocate of regulative Florida political missions for a considerable amount of time. In 2016, it moved a voting form correction that was bombed and allowed controllers to impose charges and boundaries on establishments that were roof-based and sunlight-based. Additionally, Florida Power and Light has contributed millions to groups that have anonymous, unidentified donors and launched attacks on local and state legislators.
Florida Power and Light executives have been linked to a series of “dull cash” charities, as the Orlando Sentinel’s detailed information reveals. This particular charity is clearly mentioned in the Miami-Dade Express lawyer’s investigation into an outrage involving a “phantom” Senate candidate. As per the plan, a non-political candidate was included as a no-party option on the polling form in an attempt to confuse voters and reduce support for the Democratic candidate, helping the Republicans maintain their majority in the state Senate.
The CEO of Florida Power and Light, Eric Silagy, was directly involved in allocating funds to shadowy investment groups led by the experts who oversaw Grow United, the organization that supported the apparition up-and-comers, according to documents obtained by the Sentinel. Holley, the lobbyist for Florida Power and Light who brought the net metering language to the Senate, tried to help Republican Senate hopefuls who were running in the adjacent races. Both Florida Power and Light refuted any inappropriate behavior related to political missions.
In response to questions for this story, McGrath, a representative for Florida Power and Light, stated, “Any report or idea that we had an association in, monetarily upheld, or guided others to help any ‘apparition’ competitors during the 2020 political decision cycle is bogus, and we have tracked down no proof of any lawful bad behavior by FPL or its workers.” Additionally, Grow United and earlier initiatives to improve net metering are cross-over, according to records obtained by the Sentinel.
One person who has partnered with Grow United is Abbie MacIver, a former employee of Energy Fairness, an organization that advocates for lawmakers to take into account the “cost of energy decisions, as well as their advantages.” In a letter to the Florida Public Service Commission’s state controllers last year, McClure mentioned the results and requested that the commission update its net-metering regulation.
After the commission hosted a studio, proponents of solar energy sent 16,000 messages pleading with it to approve the net metering program. According to officials, it was the fastest response time they had ever seen on any problem, and they concluded that there was no need to immediately alter net metering.
“People might not realize that popular opinion is particularly biased in our favor,” Southern Alliance for Clean Energy’s Bryan Jacob said. “We have the power as individuals, and they have the power to campaign.”
How the bill came to exist from Florida Power and Light
Bradley, a first-term congressman close to Senate administration who received Florida Power and Light’s draft bill, seats on the Community Affairs Committee and the Subcommittee on Congressional Reapportionment. Bradley is hitched to previous state Sen. Burglarize Bradley, a compelling legislator who was top of the Senate spending plan board of trustees.
Senator Jennifer Bradley of Florida spoke at a regulative meeting on Thursday, April 29, 2021, at the Tallahassee Capitol.
Bradley said the bill language arose after a gathering she had with Holley and different individuals from the utility business.
“I checked the language out. It depended on our conversation, and it was one that I could uphold as a beginning stage,” she reviewed.
Messages show that Bradley’s staff circled back to Florida Power and Light after that conversation. On Oct. 8, Bradley’s regulative assistant Katie Heffley messaged Holley with the title: “Net Metering Bill.”
“Good evening, Hope you’re getting along nicely,” she said. “I simply needed to check in and check whether you had any subsequent data or language concerning the net metering charge you talked about with Senator Bradley.”
A Florida Power and Light lobbyist and Sen. Jennifer Bradley’s official associate exchanged emails.
Holley answered eight minutes after the fact: “I do. Might I at any point carry it to you all sometime in the afternoon?” he composed. Heffley proposed that he would be able to “email it today or we will be at the Capitol one week from now.”
Instead of providing an electronic version, Holley suggested that they “drop it off” in person the following week. Ten days later, Heffley reassembled Holley. “I just need to get in touch and see if I can get an electronic copy of the net metering bill so I can put it in draft.”
email correspondence between a lobbyist for Florida Power and Light and Sen. Jennifer Bradley’s administrative assistant.
An email trade between an administrative assistant for Sen. Jennifer Bradley and a lobbyist for Florida Power and Light. [Public records from the Florida Senate]
After two days, Florida Division of Elections records show that Florida Power and Light’s parent organization, NextEra Energy, gave $10,000 to Bradley’s political council, Women Building the Future.
McClure’s political advisory group, Conservative Florida, got no utility cash during this time except for on Nov. 4 got a $10,000 commitment from Associated Industries of Florida’s political board of trustees, Voice for Florida business, which advances Florida Power and Light’s plan and whose experts have additionally chipped away at the dim cash crusades, as per the Orlando Sentinel detailing.
NextEra Energy said its political board didn’t make its commitment to Bradley’s mission “with an assumption for favor.”
The email correspondence was provided to the Times/Herald and Floodlight by the Energy and Policy Institute, a guard dog association that aims to expose false information regarding renewable energy.
Most states provide net metering
Of the 47 states that permit people and businesses to generate energy and resell it for a predetermined price, Florida is one. In any case, electric companies are opposed to solar and are growing increasingly concerned about how homeowners who go solar can reduce their profits, which is why those strategies are coming under heavy criticism.
Controllers in California plan to raise prices for sun-oriented roof clients. Indeed, given the rapid advancement of housetop solar-based technology in that state, some proponents of nature believe the change is both fair and significant.
Housetop solar, while basic to battling environmental change, is a danger to the customary utility plan of action.
Large power plants and the electrical cables that distribute that energy to customers are the products that power companies like Florida Power and Light sell for a profit. They don’t bring in cash off of the sun-oriented power produced from housetops.
Under Florida’s ongoing plan, homes and organizations that produce under 2 megawatts of sun-oriented power can offer the abundance back to their utility in return for a bill credit of 11 pennies for each kWh. Florida Power and Light contends that the game plan is uncalled for to clients who don’t produce their own power yet keep on paying for the expenses of keeping up with the network that roof sun-oriented clients likewise use.
Housetop solar power in Florida extended gradually until 2018 when the Florida Public Service Commission permitted power clients to rent nearby planet groups with almost no upfront expenses. That choice slowed the development of limited scope-based limits in the state. It will develop by 57% in 2020, as per the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Florida Power and Light says the expense of sponsoring its 24,000 net-metering clients was $30 million in 2020 (about $1,250 per client).
The sun-oriented industry dissents, highlighting research that shows roof sunlight-based entrance is low enough in many states that “the impacts of disseminated sun powered on retail power costs will probably stay insignificant for years to come.”
However, utility specialists have vouched for the Florida Public Service Commission that roofs sun oriented in the state could develop at a pace of 39% every year until 2025, assuming Florida’s ongoing net metering framework is left set up.
That development has the utilities, and lawmakers, stressed.
“Because of the ongoing framework, my constituents are being compelled to sponsor the choices of neighbors in different areas who are in a situation to have the option to put these costly frameworks on their homes,” Bradley said.
What the bill would do
Under Bradley’s bill, net-metering clients whose sunlight-powered chargers convey energy back to the utility framework would never again get credits because of the retail cost of energy, yet rather get credits in light of a lower discount cost. That cost depends on the “kept away from cost” that the utility would have brought about if it somehow managed to introduce a tantamount framework.
Draft regulation
To help minimize electricity imports, the new South Carolina law will allow utilities to charge rooftop solar customers more. The plan also includes expenses such as office charges and least regularly scheduled installments that are unique for these types of clients who use roof solar power before 2023; they would be grandfathered in with their past rates forever!
Florida currently has the second-biggest sunlight based labor force in the nation — around 11,000 direct positions and 31,000 aberrant ones, as indicated by the Solar Energy Industries Association. It positions third among states for introduced sunlight based limit, albeit quite a bit of that is huge scope, utility-possessed sun oriented.
Justin Vandenbroeck, the leader of the Florida Solar Energy Industries Association who likewise claims an Orlando-based sun powered establishment organization, said the sun oriented industry comprises for the most part of autonomously possessed private ventures. “Assuming that this bill passes for what it’s worth, it can possibly send Florida back to 2013, as though the advances of the most recent 10 years didn’t occur,” Vandenbroeck said.
McClure states the bill “isn’t prepared.”
“From the get-go in this bill’s ride, I think it has a genuine opportunity to settle out such that most gatherings are not vexed,” he said. He added that the net metering regulation has not been refreshed in 13 years and presently is an ideal opportunity to talk about it.
He stated, “We want to have the discussion.” “If this is not an opportunity in the end, I have no concerns. Housetop solar, in my opinion, benefits both Floridians and the climate. Although I am concerned about the huge costs this will result in, I also do not want to destroy Florida’s solar-powered roofing sector.”
With Florida Power and Light’s influence in the Florida Legislature and its role in the bill’s drafting, Katie Chiles Ottenweller, Southeast director of Vote Solar, an Atlanta-based support group, is cautious but optimistic.
“Organizations don’t pass regulations. Lawmakers pass regulation,” she said. “I am sure this will break the ice, but at the same time, it is really hard to talk to someone when you have a gun to your head. This industry will be destroyed by the bill as it stands.
