[villagetinker]

Originally Posted by BrianL99

I have no real clue about Florida, but I can give you some insight into how it works in MA.

MOST Electric produces are required to produce 10% (that was the number a couple of years ago, it may have changed, since) from "renewable sources". Smaller, municipal providers were exempt from the 10%.

If the power producer wasn't getting 10% of their power from renewables, they were essentially required to buy from private producers (home owners) at a rate comparable to what they sold (or produced) power for. Once they reached 10%, they weren't required to buy the power, so if you could talk them into buying it, you were at their mercy for pricing.

On top of "net metering", there are also Solar Renewal Energy Credits (SREC). I believe only 7 states have them. The average solar home generates 6-10 SREC Credits per year. A home owner will typical sell them to an aggregator, who then markets SREC's on the open market and they are sold to electric producers who need "credit to meet their requirement of producing a portion of their electrical power from renewable sources". MA also had SREC pricing controls in place.


That's a rough approximation of how it works. The rules change all the time, but that's the basic framework of how it works in MA and some other states that have adopted incentives for Solar power. (There are also federal incentives, including ACRS & Tax Credits, but they're also subject to frequent change.)

You are correct for the DEREGULATED states, Florida is not one of them, it appears to be tightly controlled by the electric utilities, so the only option appears to be "net metering" unless as I noted previously a community type project could get a better deal.