Solar Southwest Florida

Utility electric rates in Southwest Florida vary quite a bit depending on how much electricity you consume. I created a spreadsheet to calculate what your utility electric rate would be with different utilities depending on the amount of energy consumed.

What you will find is that the effective rate for LCEC is higher for typical residential customers because of the higher fixed customer charge. Another interesting fact is that LCEC netmetered customers with solar electric generation pay more that regular LCEC customers until they consume at least 1,342 kilowatt hours (net). Again, this is because of a higher customer charge.

The rates are current as of April 16, 2012 and include all charges, fees, and taxes.

Note: The Franchise Fee will vary by municipality. I have used 3% to provide a reasonable approximation and comparison. For example, the Lee County fee is 3% and the Cape Coral fee is 3.173%.

SWFL Utility Rate Comparison

Southwest Florida Utility Electric Rate Spreadsheet (Requires Excel 2007 or greater)

My New FPL Smart Meter

FPL is in full swing installing Smart Meters around Southwest Florida.I had mine installed last week, but the communications network is a work in progress, so there’s no benefit to me yet. Despite all of the complaints and fears about Smart Meters, I believe the benefits will be great, allowing a granular look at your energy consumption down to your hourly usage, all available from FPL’s website. It’s not as good as some of the energy monitors on the market that can give you a per-second look at your consumption, or even monitor individual appliances or circuits, but it will provide significant insight into your electricity usage.

Some claim that the meters are bad for our health, are inaccurate, or disorient bees. Seriously!

I’m not going to make a call whether some of the claims out there are accurate, but I can tell you one thing for certain – understanding your energy consumption by learning when you use energy is key to reducing your utility bills. As my father-in-law says, “just like a business, you can’t manage energy without an accounting system.”

Unfortunately, those with solar electric systems that are under a netmetering agreement will not get the new smart meters. It is unclear whether the meters are bi-directional, or whether FPL or the manufacturer just hasn’t tested the accuracy measuring energy fed back to the grid. I’m trying to get clarification on that matter from FPL and will let you know if I hear back from their netmetering department.

Here’s a video from FPL about the new Smart Meters:

I guess I’ll weigh in on the highly publicized FPL rate increase request that would add about $7 to each residential account’s monthly bill starting in 2013.

FPL representatives say that the increase will pay for increased costs of doing business and a new “efficient” natural gas fired plant. The increase amounts to $695 million per year. Expected savings from the new plant – $600 million over it’s LIFETIME!

Does something seem very wrong here?

The problem with a public utility is that they are entitled to make a net profit, but that guaranteed profit is a percentage of costs. Costs increase, profits increase. There is no incentive to keep costs in check when you can go back to your customers and get a government mandated bailout from them!

Unfortunately, this is not a rate hike, so there is nothing you can do to avoid it by reducing usage or producing your own power. They want this amount added to the monthly customer charge, which is a base cost before you even start using power from the utility. This directly impacts solar energy sellers (netmetering customers), as they would likely be forced to pay this additional cost even if they consume no net power from FPL. On the other hand, that could just create more of an incentive to reduce the usage part of your bill with solar energy.

Lee County Electric Cooperative (LCEC) places a paper insert in utility bill envelopes for netmetered customers (those with solar photovoltaic systems). This insert is a bit confusing, and it is no wonder that customers come to me asking if their solar electric system is meeting expectations. Months ago I made recommendations to LCEC on how to reword the information presented to make it more accurate and understandable, and they have made some improvements.

So how do you read the LCEC netmetering bill insert? Here is picture of a recent statement from a customer’s utility service. Let’s break down each line.

Example of a LCEC Netmetering Insert

1. Kilowatt hours consumed (from LCEC): This is the total amount of energy that your home used from the utility company. It is NOT the total amount of energy your home used. Your home also used some energy produced by the solar electric system.
2. Kilowatt hours returned to LCEC (the grid): This is the excess energy that your solar electric system “sold back” to the grid when it was producing more power than your home was using.
3. Kilowatt hours net from/to the grid: This is how much energy for which you will be billed. It is the difference between the energy you used from LCEC and how much you “sold back” to LCEC.
4. You have reduced your LCEC billable consumption by: This is always the same as #2 above. I don’t understand the need for this item, and it is the most confusing item on the statement. The asterisk should actually be next to this item. Without the asterisk, it would be easy to mistakenly assume that this solar electric system only produced 281 kilowatt hours during the billing period. The bottom line is that LCEC has no idea how much energy your solar electric system produces. The utility meter can only measure energy drawn from the grid and returned to the grid. It cannot measure power produced by your solar electric system that is consumed by your home concurrently. This is where the use of a solar energy monitoring system is helpful.
5. Reserves (accumulated) kWh to date: If the amount in #3 above is negative, it means that your solar electric system produced more energy than your home consumed in the billing period. This line is a running total of the “banked” kilowatt hours that you have in your account. If there are accumulated reserves at the end of the year, LCEC will cut you a check for the net amount of energy “sold back” to the utility.

It is unfortunate that this has to be so confusing, but it is a limitation of the bi-directional netmetering approach that local utilities have adopted. FPL uses the same type of bi-directional meter. Some utilities actually require a second meter that just measures energy produced by your solar electric system. This is called a revenue meter. You are billed the difference between your regular usage meter and the revenue meter. In this approach, the utility can tell you how much solar energy you produced, because you effectively sell all of your solar energy back to the grid. It also allows for varying energy prices. For example, you may be able to sell solar energy back to the grid for a higher price than the consumption rate. It also allows for a variety of time-of-use billing practices.

While the revenue meter approach is better for a number of reasons, the bidirectional meter is cheaper and easier to implement for the utility and the homeowner. The revenue meter would typically be easier for the solar contractor to install because integrating with some existing electrical distribution systems is troublesome. A revenue meter also allows you to compare you independent solar monitoring system to the revenue meter to ensure you are being credited properly for your solar production.

The LCEC bidirectional meter should accurately measure your net electricity usage. It allows you to sell your excess solar electricity back to the utility company at the same rate for which you purchase electricity. It may be a bit confusing, but ultimately it gets the job done!

Early morning dew covers PV panels at Naples Botanical Gardens

Fafco Solar has completed the FGCU Naples Botanical Garden photovoltaic system installation. I am particularly proud of this system and the expert installers that did the heavy lifting. The system includes 164 SolarWorld 245 watt solar photovoltaic modules, 164 Enphase M215 microinverters, a Unirac SolarMount mounting system, and S-5! Clamp attachments.

Because of the existing electrical system at the facility, the photovoltaic system is divided into two sub-arrays backfeeding power into two 208V 3-Phase electrical distribution panels. Commercial 3-Phase installations are always interesting from a design standpoint because typically we are dealing with various existing transformers and often generator backup systems.

Workers Install PV Module

It was truly a pleasure working with the Naples Botanical Garden staff and Manhattan Kraft Construction on this project. The weather cooperated for the most part. The job went very smoothly, finishing about a week ahead of my expectations.

This job is a model for future PV construction projects. We look forward to the next big PV job as we move on to a large multi-tenant solar water heating job in Fort Myers.