Tampa Bay Times:

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Florida’s lawmakers are considering a major change to the state’s rooftop solar program. A bill that has already passed its first committee hearing would drastically cut what solar homeowners get paid for excess energy sent back to the grid. Whether the program needs a fresh look or not, the bill as written is too vague and way too one-sided.

Florida currently allows homeowners with solar arrays to receive credit for electricity they send back to the grid. The state’s public utilities then sell that energy to other customers. Right now, the homeowners get paid what amount to retail prices for the excess power. Among other things, Senate Bill 1024 would lower the rate to essentially what it costs the utilities to generate power — the wholesale price…That’s less than a third of what they get now.

But what if the panels offset that resident’s net overall power use? Do they have to pay retail for energy in, but get only wholesale when it goes back into the grid?

Here’s the dirty part:

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The bill appears to have been written by a lobbyist for Florida Power & Light, the state’s largest electric utility, according to reporting from the Times/Herald Tallahassee Bureau. Internal emails show that the lobbyist sent the text of the bill to state Sen. Jennifer Bradley’s [R, elected 2020] staff on Oct. 18. Two days — two days! — later FPL’s parent company contributed $10,000 to Bradley’s political campaign committee, and a month later Bradley filed a bill with nearly identical language to the one the lobbyist sent to her office. Bradley said she was not influenced by the money, and FPL’s parent company said its political committee did not give the money “with expectation of favor.”

Of course not. Just $10K two days after she took the lobbyist’s bill to put her name on it and get it introduced. $10K for a freshman lawmaker. This cannot even have the appearance of corruption, as Justice Kennedy once said.



The best government money can buy?

It’ll easily pass. Florida is all about political corruption.

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Saint Cloud, Minnesota, where the weather is wonderful even when it isn't.

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pdq

Of course not. Just $10K two days after she took the lobbyist’s bill to put her name on it and get it introduced. $10K for a freshman lawmaker. This cannot even have the appearance of corruption, as Justice Kennedy once said.

Spending $ on politics is free speech according to this court. The more money you have the more freedom you have; IOW, your freedom of speech is broadly contingent on how much $ you have to give to politicians. And then - as you say - top it off with ruling that only a bribe (clearly overt quid-pro-quo) can be legislated as illegal contributions. Even the thinnest veil of separation between receiving the money and a political act means it's A-OK by this court. No corruption here, move on.

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e pluribus unum

Made it through committee on a bipartisan vote. This will be one of the first bills passed and signed into law.

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“No persons are more frequently wrong, than those who will not admit they are wrong.” -- François de La Rochefoucauld

"Those who cannot accept the past are condemned to revise it." -- Geo. Mathias

While I can appreciate that dealing with rooftop solar involves some costs for the utility, it's striking that they fight against these costs tooth and nail, while power companies (in the area, at least, not necessarily FP+L) have been throwing literally billions of ratepayer dollars in cost overruns at big nuclear.

South Carolina pulled the plug after $9 billion in losses at V.C. Summer; Georgia's similar project looks like it's currently up to $28 billion, twice the projected cost, and increasing every year. And we still have zero viable plans for long term nuke waste storage.

These huge expenditures on old and increasingly costly technology are being passed on to customers, but upgrading the grid to accommodate rooftop solar which is continuing to get cheaper and cheaper? Mustn't have that!

Big power isn't paying for the cost overruns, your rate increases are. Solar has the potential to reduce the customer base that is making the payments. That means the utility will have to increase the rates to avoid paying those overruns from profit. The increased rates will just drive more customers to solar. It is a reversed pyramid scheme.

This law helps to keep the customer base intact and keep profits up.

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“No persons are more frequently wrong, than those who will not admit they are wrong.” -- François de La Rochefoucauld

"Those who cannot accept the past are condemned to revise it." -- Geo. Mathias

These @#$%&, I'm seeing more of this kinda BS from power companies. Think I heard California is doing something just as knuckle headed.

In Ohio the company I work for installed a 2.5MW Wind generator. And did NOT hook it up to “the grid”. They used a smart power distribution system and use it to power part of the factory. Which consumes about 10x that amount of power when running full tilt. Why ? Because the local utility was only going to pay about 25% of their generation rate for the power.

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Carnos Jax
These @#$%&, I'm seeing more of this kinda BS from power companies. Think I heard California is doing something just as knuckle headed.

You heard correctly. Any time the consumer makes a little headway, government in cahoots with big PoCo comes in and stops it. Did any of the PoCos suffer at all for the fires their equipment started around the state? They reorganized, and now this is one more way they see to get that money back.

As for solar customers 'not paying their own way', with mandatory interconnect fees and the money they invested in their systems, they've already paid plenty. It's just that Big PoCo isn't getting any of it.

Lots of calls and letters going to the governor in California right now about this. PoCos have even gone as far as figuring out exactly how to charge people extra for the use of their own batteries …

If I'm reading this correctly, FPL currently pays customers the retail price for their excess power.

Now they want to pay them wholesale.

It seems that something in between would be fair, but not all the way to wholesale. That would only be fair if FPL paid all the capital costs for the solar installations.

Georgia's doing something similar. The first 5000 customers with solar get retail when it goes into the grid. Now they're past that number and so going forward new customers will get wholesale when their power goes into the grid.

[thecurrentga.org]

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Lux Interior
If I'm reading this correctly, FPL currently pays customers the retail price for their excess power.

Now they want to pay them wholesale.

It seems that something in between would be fair, but not all the way to wholesale. That would only be fair if FPL paid all the capital costs for the solar installations.

That is what Massachusetts does. I get 'near retail' reimbursement for my over production. Then the SREC's (Solar Renewable Energy Credits) are in addition to that, kind of like a dividend for using MY money to invest so Eversource does not have to.

Dave

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Welcome to Dave's BBQ!

Many have eaten here....

Few have died

"Paying the retail price" is pretty easy for PoCos to game, too. They make schedules that charge very little for electricity during the peak solar generating time every day, then jack it up from 4pm-9pm when everyone's at home from work trying to get things done. Oh, and during several of the spring months - when many are still on a "winter" schedule for Time of Use, they'll knock back the hours even farther so the consumer still can't win.

Vermin, every single one of them …

Indiana is playing the same game. Not sure where it is in the process, but I know the plan was introduced.

I’m really kind of confounded by this all. It’s not like they couldn’t see solar coming.

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pdq
I’m really kind of confounded by this all. It’s not like they couldn’t see solar coming.

It is still a small minority of customers on solar and these changes will go a long way in keeping it small for a long time. The Power companies are determined to not let upstarts do to them what Tesla did to the auto industry.

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“No persons are more frequently wrong, than those who will not admit they are wrong.” -- François de La Rochefoucauld

"Those who cannot accept the past are condemned to revise it." -- Geo. Mathias

No $100/month fee to stay hooked to the grid like power companies out West proposed?

Edison Electric Institute, the utility trade group, did a report several years ago outlining the strategy companies should use. There are a variety of things they are doing. A couple of arguments seem to be working in Cali, unfortunately...

--rooftop is not available to poor people so it should be stopped. As has been pointed out, rooftop buyers are spending their own money. Poor people are not driving BMWs either.

--if you let too many people escape the clutches of the utility, rates will go up. This is bogus because the utilities already charge for connection, and most installations need the grid in addition to the battery. But this is a fear thing. (A corollary here is that we blamed our norcal utility for fires. And the idea is that if too many people escape, there will not be enough money to subsidize uninsured fire victims. But this is mostly said in whispers.)

--and Newsom appointed a Berkeley professor who has hated rooftop since it began. He is well known as a negawatts guy (reduce consumption!) and a community guy (scale installations for utilities or coops are cheaper.) He is not a bad guy, not a utility stooge. But his antipathy for rooftop is a problem. ('people should not be allowed to build it, but they should contribute more for community action via taxes!' is a paraphrase for his position.)

As a result the Cali PUC is voting next week (I think) on screwing rooftop and killing the local industry. As Bill in NC says above, part of the proposal is to charge a fee on installs every year scaled to the size of the install. (because rich people with bigger installs can pay more. Never mind that they paid more.)

Gosh this sounds like a GOP rant. Sorry. It is just that Cali policy was 'a million solar roofs' and that building codes in many counties requires rooftop with new construction. But the Edison arguments are winning.

I am concerned that if they are not dragged kicking and screaming into the future, power companies will happily stay in the comfortable (dirty) past.

It is not just the power companies, but local politics as well. There is an article in the Post today about local politicians in North Dakota maintaining a coal plant--more specifically coal jobs--and preventing wind installations. It is a thing.

And renewables have issues as well with NIMBYs. A Nevada solar farm was stopped because the NIMBYs did not want to look at it. (This is a real issue, as several of the major climate groups really are hard over on forcing 'sacrifice' (reduced living standards) as the key climate strategy. Which I promise will never work given the politics. But I digress...)

These SOBs are incorrigible and they have lots of money. The California lobbyists already tried to get this disgusting proposal through the legislature and were voted down after significant citizen action. They didn't skip a beat and went straight to the appointed public utilities commission with a virtually identical proposal. If they get away with this it is really going to piss me off. We're in a climate emergency and a state that's supposed to be an environmental leader. This shouldn't be getting the time of day but it has a big chance of winning (and everybody else losing).

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"In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion." (1987) -- Carl Sagan