Targeting solar energy in Florida
Big utilities like FPL have teamed up with lawmakers to make residential solar less affordable
My wife and I don’t have solar panels on our home. But I respect those who do — people who decided to invest their own money and generate their own clean energy.
That’s why I’m concerned about a power-company-backed bill rolling through the Florida Legislature designed to pop solar customers right in their panels.
The fight over solar energy is already woefully lopsided. Fewer than 1% of Florida households use solar.
So this isn’t like David vs. Goliath. It’s more like David vs. 50 Goliaths.
Still, Tallahassee lawmakers are almost always on Team Goliath. And the power companies are worried that residential solar is gaining in popularity. So GOP lawmakers in both the House and Senate have filed bills that would allow power companies to reimburse customers who generate their own solar power at lower rates, making the systems tougher to afford.
“This bill aims to stop roof-top solar,” said Susan Glickman, director of the Florida Clinicians for Climate Action, “to choke it off before it takes hold.”
It’s not just your traditional earthycrunchy greenies opposed to this bill. George Riley, a former director of the Republican Party of Florida who now works with Conservatives for Clean Energy, said: “Pulling the plug on this industry would be a massive step backwards.”
The power companies claim to be shocked and offended by accusations that they oppose residential solar programs. They claim to love solar energy but argue they’re currently paying inflated prices to customers who generate their own solar energy and sell it back to the grid.
In fact, Florida Power & Light claims it’s overpaying greedy solar-panel owners by so much that the other 99% of their customers have to pay an extra $30 million.
That sounds like a lot of money. But clean-energy advocates say FPL’s numbers and arguments are a lot of bunk.
They say FPL pays solar customers a fraction of what the company claims and note that solar-panel owners merely want the same fair value for the power they generate that power companies get. They say the power companies are really just trying to make solar less affordable to prevent more people from becoming self-reliant.
At this point, you might need to ask yourself which side you believe. The clean energy folks from both the left and the right? Or the power companies? I think most people are gonna go with the bipartisan clean-energy guys.
But just for argument’s sake, let’s say you believe everything FPL says — that its only interest in wanting to pay solar customers less is because they really, truly want to pass on savings to the rest of its customers.
Then here’s my question: Why doesn’t the bill they’re pushing guarantee consumers will see those savings?
I read the bill three times. I saw where it says that power companies want permission to pay solar customers less. But I didn’t see anything requiring those savings be passed along to the other customers.
“There’s nothing in the legislation that guarantees lower bills,”
Glickman said.
Huh. Well, that seems like a problem.
You know what else seems like a problem? The Legislature’s own staff analysis concluded this bill could lead to existing solar customers getting “a lower return on their investment than initially expected,” fewer people buying solar in the future and the utilities making more money.
My goodness. It’s almost like the power companies wrote the legislation themselves.
They did.
That’s according to the Miami
Herald, which found evidence that FPL not only wrote the bill for Jennifer Bradley, the senator sponsoring the legislation, but steered money her way to boot. “Records from the Florida Senate show that FPL drafted the bill, and lobbyist John Holley delivered it to Bradley, R-Fleming Island,” the Herald reported, “and FPL’s parent company followed up with a $10,000 contribution to her political committee.”
FPL responded to that story by setting up a website attacking one of the reporters who wrote it — without refuting the facts
about the company drafting the legislation or the political money involved.
The Orlando Sentinel also discovered an interesting back story behind the similar House bill meant to undercut solar customers. That bill was sponsored by Tampa Bay Republican Lawrence McClure who based his call for reform, in part, on a report produced by a think tank — one the Sentinel discovered received extensive funding from entities controlled by FPL consultants.
That story made McClure look either ignorant or complicit. He wouldn’t answer questions about which one he might be.
FPL says the industry and its legislative buddies are getting a bad rap; that they just want common-sense reform to the current solar-payment plan known as “net metering.”
“I would just emphasize that FPL does not oppose net metering,” wrote FPL spokesman Christopher McGrath. “We oppose the multi-million dollar annual subsidy that’s paid for the 99.5% of customers who choose not to or can’t buy a private rooftop solar system.”
So again, the argument here is that solar customers should get less credit for the energy they generate, so that FPL and other power companies can pass along more savings to other customers … even though none of those savings are actually guaranteed in the legislation.
That’s the part I keep coming back to:
If the real point of the bill is to pass along savings, why wouldn’t the bill explicitly demand that?
And if the goal isn’t really to stiff current solar customers and discourage future ones, why would the Legislature’s own staff suggest that might be the result?
Unless maybe this proposal isn’t really as sunny as its being billed.