South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Your FPL bill helps fund charging stations
Two lawmakers say funding to expand electric vehicle program shouldn’t come from people without those vehicles
If you are a Florida Power & Light customer, you are helping to fund the utility’s $175 million plan to expand its network of electric vehicle charging stations across the state.
FPL’s plan to expand charging stations through 2025, part of a program it calls EVolution, was approved by the Florida Public Service Commission last October as part of the utility’s latest four-year rate plan. It will increase fast-charging facilities along an 800-mile network of major roadways, as well as provide charging ports at businesses and residential homes. As electric vehicle sales increase in coming decades, it will also provide an additional revenue stream for FPL.
Two Florida lawmakers are seeking to remove the burden of funding the program from the utility’s 5.6 million ratepayers who aren’t among the state’s 58,000 electric vehicle owners.
Sen. Keith Perry, who represents the Gainesville area, and Rep. David Berrero, whose district includes parts of Broward, Miami-Dade and Collier counties, are sponsoring bills that would bar investor-owned utilities from recovering development costs for EV charging stations from all ratepayers after January 1, 2024.
Utilities would only be allowed to build and operate EV charging stations by creating separate non-regulated entities, like NextEra Energy’s for-profit FPL Home Services subsidy that markets warranty plans, surge protectors, air conditioners and other products to FPL customers.
Berrero and Perry argue that investor-owned utilities, which include FPL, Duke Energy and Tampa Electric, enjoy an unfair advantage over private-market charging station providers because they have such a large captive source of invest
ment income.
When utilities are allowed to recover EV charging development costs from their ratepayer bases, “that gives investor owned utilities a significant competitive advantage over third parties, like gas stations or electricity pump manufacturers [that want to] enter into the field,” Borrero told the House’s Tourism, Infrastructure & Energy Subcommittee on Feb. 15.
He argued, “Non-users of EV pump stations should not have to pay the cost for EV users.”
FPL increasing stations to meet growing demand
The bills are supported by Chargepoint, a California-based private-market network of charging stations, and the Florida Retail Association.
Opponents include Associated Industries Florida, a lobbying organization that includes Florida’s publicly owned utilities among its largest donors.
While the bills cleared their first committee hearings in the House and Senate, neither has been scheduled for a subsequent hearing as the session’s scheduled March 11 end approaches.
Typically, bills need to be approved by three committees in each chamber before advancing to a vote by that chamber’s full membership. But it’s not uncommon for bills to take multiple years, and numerous revisions, before advancing to the governor’s desk.
Currently, FPL operates about 55 fast-charging stations across the state and about 50 private workplace locations, according to data provided by the utility. According to FPL’s website, the public stations offer nearly
1,000 charging ports. After stations currently under construction are complete, nearly 100 public stations will be available “with more to come,” FPL spokesman Chris McGrath said by email.
Electric vehicle owners recently received emails from FPL inviting them to sign up for a program that would provide fastcharging ports in their homes with no upfront equipment or installation charge.
That program, which will bill EV owners a flat monthly fee and provide all-you-can-eat charging power during off-peak nights and weekends, is not funded by all ratepayers, McGrath said.
“The cost for the charging equipment and electrical work is factored into the price of the program,” he said. “Importantly, this voluntary program is paid for
100% by participants, not the general body of ratepayers.”
Critics see hypocrisy
Critics charge that FPL’s plan to require all 5.6 million of its ratepayers to fund a program that currently benefits an estimated 58,000 electric vehicle owners smacks of hypocrisy.
Even as the utility funds its EV charging station program through its overall ratepayer base, it’s pushing a bill that would stop such funding for rooftop solar users.
It claims the infrastructure needed to keep solar customers connected to its grid is paid for by non-solar customers. To reduce that burden, the utility is seeking to reform a 2008 state law that requires FPL to credit rooftop solar owners — at current retail rates — for excess electricity their systems send back to the grid for use by other customers. FPL wants to reduce those buyback rates to no more than what it would otherwise spend to generate that electricity itself. The utility also wants the right to impose fixed fees to ensure solar owners pay their “fair share” for the cost of remaining connected to the grid.
Rooftop solar owners and installers are crying foul. They say FPL has presented no evidence to prove that each of its
31,700 solar owners enjoys
$90 a month in value, or about $30 million annually overall, that non-solar customers have to cover.
“Hypocrisy? Absolutely,” said George Cavros, the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy’s Florida director and its energy policy attorney. FPL’s argument that non-solar users subsidize solar users “is driven by unvetted and incomplete information,” he said, adding that no utility has presented data that proves the argument.
Still, he said, the alliance does not take the position that non-users of electric vehicles shouldn’t help to fund EV charging facilities. The alliance, he said, believes “there’s a role for utilities to play” in expanding access to charging stations in rural and low-income areas where investment by private industry would be less likely.
“We support utility investment that addresses the climate crisis. Electrification of transportation plays a crucial role in that,” he said.
FPL says critics are wrong
FPL’s McGrath disputed accusations of hypocrisy.
“Unlike private rooftop solar installations that are fueling a rapidly growing, multi-million-dollar annual cross subsidy for non-rooftop solar customers, the FPL EVolution program is not expected to have a significant impact on the general rates that customers pay,” he said.
“Furthermore, there is potential to provide significant benefits for FPL’s general body of customers in the longer term, as the benefits of vehicle electrification are not limited to owners of EVs,” he said.
“Expected increased revenues from EV charging that result from expanded market penetration of EVs will contribute to the recovery of the utility’s fixed costs and put downward pressure on electric rates, thereby benefitting the general body of customers.”
But Bradley Marshall, senior attorney for the environmental law firm Earthjustice, says ratepayers should not be expected to fund utility projects that could be handled by the private market. He pointed out that projects funded through what are called utilities’ “rate bases” are structured in a way that delivers a built-in return on investment to the utilities’ investor-owners.
“Earthjustice is certainly in favor of electric vehicles and development of EV infrastructure generally,” he said. “It just has to be done in a fair manner so people who can’t buy electric vehicles won’t pay higher bills to help investor-owned utilities make extra profits.”