Sam Fields Opines: Amendment 1 Is FPL Trick To Stop Solar Energy
BY SAM FIELDS
(Sam Fields wrote this in June for The Miami Herald. Browardbeat.com believes it is timely now.)
Amendment 1 is a product of FPL and that it is designed to stop consumers from setting up their own solar-energy systems.
Three Florida Supreme Court justices unsuccessfully voted to keep Amendment 1 off the ballot because it is misleading.
In 2012, I installed a 10,000-watt solar system in my house. I was able to do this with a $2-a-watt payment from FPL and a 30 percent federal income tax credit. I have reduced my electric bill by at least 85 percent.
Amendment 1 would outlaw the $2-a-watt payment.
FPL and Doyle would have you believe that the payment to me is unfair because it is wrong for FPL customers to subsidize people like me. This is flat-out wrong. The sole source of money to create the electricity we all need comes from customers’ monthly bills.
For $20,000, FPL customers were relieved from creating those 10,000 watts for the next 25 years, which is how long the system should last. I have assumed the cost of maintenance and insurance and my excess clean electricity is pumped back into the grid for all others to use.
Based on FPL’s most recent solar project at FIU, the FPL charge just for building its solar arrays was $4.3 per watt. That’s $43,000 for those same 10,000 watts. Add 25 years of maintenance and it would not be surprising that FPL will stick it to its customers for $100,000 for those 10,000 watts.
So who’s subsidizing whom? The thousands of home solar systems have not cost FPL customers one thin dime. To the contrary, we have saved them tens of millions.
In November, vote No on Amendment 1.
October 21st, 2016 at 11:01 am
Sam is RIGHT and this needs to be put on a card and passed out at every polling station. Warning: The power companies are trying to fool us.
October 21st, 2016 at 1:51 pm
Thank you Counsellor n Mr Nevins you have gotten two more NO votes in my household.
October 22nd, 2016 at 10:53 am
Thank you Sam for featuring the truth about Amendment !
Vote NO if you are for Solar Energy.
And Buddy- can you please write something about the other amendments BEFORE everyone else votes?
October 22nd, 2016 at 4:29 pm
Buddy,
For those who are interested — and no, I am not selling a GD thing — there is also a PACE program in the county and many cities including mine.
PACE stands for property assessed clean energy. It is a state program operating under state law but carried out locally.
It is a financing program.
PACE allows property owners to finance qualified clean energy or wind resistant projects, including solar panels, through your property tax payment.
There are about 4 or 5 different financing companies certified by the state to participate in PACE. There are also hundreds of PACE certified contractors, and more are signing up every day. In fact, potential PACE customers bring contractors to certify in the program all the time.
So, say you want solar panels on your roof but you don’t want to get a bank loan or have bad credit. If you own the property getting the improvement, through PACE you can tack on the cost of the improvement and pay it off over the useful life of the improvement. You shop for the contractor and price you want from the certified list. Select one and PACE pays the contractor.
The debit then runs with your property, not you as the borrower.
So, say the life of the improvement is 10 years. You get ten years to pay it off. But say you sell your house in 8 years. Your buyer purchases your home subject to the balance, or the last 2 years of the property tax assessment. Don’t pay? They will foreclose on you, but that would happen anyway if you failed to pay your property taxes.
It costs taxpayers nothing to do this but it does improves the value and strength of homes. And it saves you money on the electric bill side.
PACE is an option to consider for those interested in changing out to hurricane windows, insulating their home, solar panels, all kinds of improvements but don’t want to use conventional financing.
To learn more go to your home city website or to the county website and search PACE.
Angelo
October 26th, 2016 at 5:08 pm
I am showing Counsellor Fields vital piece to EVERY VOTER I CAN FIND
I never thought I would run around quoting Counsellor Fields.
October 27th, 2016 at 8:02 pm
Why should I as a ratepayer who does not want to generate home power, pay for FPL to keep generation ready for all the home solar generators when its clowdy and rainy for 4 days straight, as ocurrs in our rainy season ? If the law is changed so that home generators are on their own, and FPL does not have to provide them rainy day power, Ill vote in favor, but im not going to vote for you to get it both ways.