As it stands now in Florida, only utilities can sell power to retail customers. Due to this restriction, landlords cannot sell power from solar panels to their tenants. It also effectively shuts down solar leasing. With leases, an outside company pays the high upfront cost of solar panels, and their customers sign long-term contracts to buy the power. Such leasing has made residential solar the fastest-growing part of the U.S. solar market. But it is simply not legal in Florida. Each utility has monopoly control of the sales and distribution of electricity.
For many years, both citizens and politicians have wanted to
open up the utility monopolies to competition from solar companies. The Florida
Center for Investigative Reporting interviewed Paige Kreegel, who was a State Representative back in 2009. He was chair of the
state House’s Committee on Energy. He considered himself a free-market
Republican and he wanted to get government out of the way of the growing solar
industry. But the rest of the Committee Members wouldn’t touch solar energy and
he found himself an outsider on the Energy Committee he chaired. It turns out
that Florida’s utility companies have heavily funded Florida political campaigns
- to the tune of $12 million between 2010 and 2015. Those donations included
contributions to every member of the Florida Senate and House leadership and a whopping $1.1 million to Governor Rick Scott's 2014 reelection campaign.
According to State Sen. Jeff Brandes, “Here’s how the power companies control
the Legislature: they ask the chairman of committees to never meet on the
issue.”
To circumvent the lack of action in the Florida legislature,
Floridians for Solar Choice attempted to place a constitutional amendment on
the Florida ballot.
