Florida Power & Light Company (FPL) will bring online five solar project by the end of 2020. All five projects are part of the utility’s FPL SolarTogether community solar program.
Three of the solar energy centers are the first to be installed in their respective counties: Nassau, St. Johns and Union counties. Two other solar energy centers in Baker and Okeechobee counties will be the second in each. The five projects total 372.5 MW.
“Nobody in America is building more affordable solar than FPL and I’m very pleased that despite many challenges, including multiple storms and COVID, the FPL team was able to keep all of these projects on schedule and budget,” said Eric Silagy, president and CEO of FPL. “Our FPL SolarTogether program is an innovative piece of the company’s rapid solar expansion, which helps us consistently deliver America’s best energy value – electricity that’s not just clean and reliable, but also affordable.”
The new solar energy centers (all 74.5 MW each) are:
- FPL Egret Solar Energy Center, Baker County
- FPL Lakeside Solar Energy Center, Okeechobee County
- FPL Nassau Solar Energy Center, Nassau County
- FPL Trailside Solar Energy Center, St. Johns County
- FPL Union Springs Solar Energy Center, Union County
As part of the FPL SolarTogether program, the five new solar energy centers give all customers – both residential and business – an opportunity to enjoy the economic and environmental benefits of solar energy, and the chance to cost-effectively support the growth of solar in Florida. The program also benefits all FPL customers by reducing the company’s already-low fuel costs and adding more emissions-free solar generation to FPL’s energy mix.
FPL has nine additional solar projects still under construction and expects to bring them online in 2021.
I see both FP&L and Duke racing to take up the RPS, so ‘they’ hold the assets instead of sharing the grid with entities that have installed their own very large solar PV systems on their “server farm campuses”. With today’s technologies of ground mount single axis solar tracking installed east/west rotation, bi-facial panels at larger utility scale solar PV panels that put out 500 to 600watts/panel would cover around 125 to 160 acres of area. Some of these large campuses have a lot of roof real estate on several large buildings, areas of parking that can be covered with solar PV panels and generate quite a bit of power from on site assets. As a data entity, the well known UPS units are understood, having their own solar PV and energy storage will allow more resiliency than the grid can provide during harsh weather events. Sooner or later it will be cost effective for these C&I entities to have their own mini-grids instead of relying on the utility to install this infrastructure.