FPL defends plans for Dania Beach plant

Since 2005, Florida Power & Light Co. has built nine natural-gas fired plants. Wednesday, four residents of Dania Beach traveled to Tallahassee to tell regulators they don’t want a new plant in their city.

Before Juno Beach-based FPL can build an $888 million natural gas-fired plant to replace an older facility that burns natural gas and oil, the Florida Public Service Commission must find there is a need for the plant. A vote is scheduled for March 1.

“You have been appointed to represent the best interest of people, not corporations,” said John Jones, 28, an FPL customer and Dania Beach resident whose entire family lives there. “If you care about us, you’d listen to the voices of nearly 8,000 people who signed petitions and sent in comments but couldn’t be here today.”

Jones and the other residents, members of the New Florida Majority’s and the Sierra Club’s Power 4All campaign launched in November, say they prefer a cleaner form of energy, such as solar, to generate power.

After their appearance before the commission, the residents delivered five boxes of signatures and comments to Gov. Rick Scott.

At Wednesday’s hearing, FPL experts testified that customers will benefit if it replaces Lauderdale units 4 and 5 at its facility with an advanced unit 7 that will produce 1,163 megawatts by 2022. That’s 279 megawatts more than the plant produces.

Building the unit will be $1.28 billion less expensive than power-

ing up an equivalent amount of solar energy, FPL attorney William Cox said. The plant, if approved, would reduce fuel costs, saving customers $337 million over its projected lifetime, and will increase reliability and lower emissions.

Wednesday, the Sierra Club and the Florida Office of Public Counsel urged the PSC to deny FPL’s need determination petition, for different reasons.

Sierra Club attorney Julie Kaplan said that FPL cannot prove that building the unit is the most cost-effective way to meet the need for more power.

Wind and solar energy and energy storage prices are plummeting and are expected to continue to drop, Kaplan said.

“Locking FPL’s ratepayers into a massive, exorbitantly expensive gas plant today robs them of the benefits of clean energy — precisely when utilities across the country and across the world are reducing cost and risk by rapidly moving into a renewable energy future,” Kaplan said.

Associate Public Counsel Patricia Christensen said FPL’s 10-year site plan did not project a need to add power to its system until 2024 to meet system reliability. FPL’s 2017 projections state that in 2024 it will have a reserve margin of 19.8 percent, which is 54 megawatts below a 20 percent reserve.

FPL’s 20 percent reserve margin ensures the company has the capacity to produce that much more energy than its customers use. A higher reserve increases the grid’s reliability, especially when demand is high — such as during a hot summer afternoon.

FPL’s Cox said the petition is not about a choice between solar and natural gas, and that the Sierra Cub is using the case as part of its nationwide effort to oppose all natural gas infrastructure, pipelines and plants.

Delaying the project until 2024 will bring reliability risks to the largest, most concentrated service area in FPL’s territory, MiamiDade and Broward counties, Cox said.

FPL operates 635 megawatts of solar generating capacity throughout the state. It recently powered up four solar plants and four more are near completion, which will add another 300 megawatts.