Published February 27, 2009

Wake up and good morning. Florida Power & Light Co.’s groundbreaking this week in Arcadia for its DeSoto County “Next Generation” solar energy center will bring commercial-scale solar photovoltaic power to Florida for the very first time. At 25 megawatts, the 180-acre plant will be the largest photovoltaic solar facility in the nation when it is complete at the end of 2009. Officials say it will be able to power a fifth of DeSoto County, or 3,000 homes — granted, not one of Florida’s high density counties — pollution free and replace the need for 277,000 barrels of oil.

The project should be generating electricity by the end of the year. The panels will capture up to 25 percent more electricity because they face the sun throughout all the hours of the day, rather than sit fixed in one position. The company, Sun Power, has built hundreds like this around the world. But the one they’re building now in DeSoto County for Florida Power and Light will be by far the biggest in North America. Here’s My Fox Tampa Bay’s video report on how the panels work, which notes the solar panels could be vulnerable to hurricanes. And here’s FPL’s own video that helps explain how it works.

The facility (show in rendering) will provide significant economic benefits to DeSoto County, creating more than 200 jobs during peak construction and providing more than $2 million in annual tax revenues by the end of 2010 to help boost the local economy.

Said FPL Group president Jim Robo: “We’re proud to be the company that is bringing commercial-scale solar power to the Sunshine State. Solar power will help promote a new clean-energy economy in Florida, reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, and address global climate change through the production of emissions-free energy.

Photovoltaic panels convert sunlight directly into electricity, which can be fed onto the electrical grid without the need of a turbine generator. FPL says advances are now making photovoltaic panels practical on a large scale. The company says this facility will avoid the release of more than 575,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. That’s like taking more than 4,500 cars off the road every year, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

FPL is building two other solar facilities in Florida. With the DeSoto solar plant, they will total 110 megawatts of renewable solar energy capacity. FPL broke ground in December 2008 on the Martin “Next Generation” solar energy center, which will be the world’s first hybrid solar energy plant and the second largest solar thermal plant in the nation. It will generate 75 megawatts of solar energy once it is fully operational in 2010. FPL will build a third facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, which will add 10 megawatts to the state’s photovoltaic solar capacity.

Robo said the company envisions a “CleanTech Corridor” spanning the Florida peninsula filled with renewable and other clean-energy projects. He added:

“The goal is to make Florida a magnet for renewable manufacturers, for research dollars at the state’s universities, and for good-paying jobs in a dynamic growth industry.”

FPL’s three solar projects will make Florida the No. 2 producer of solar energy in the nation and strengthen FPL Group’s position in clean energy. FPL already is the nation’s No. 1 producer of renewable energy from wind.

All in all, not bad timing given the Obama administration’s apparent commitment to encouraging alternative energy.

– Robert Trigaux, Times Business Columnist

By Stephen A. Smith, Special to the Times
Thursday, August 20, 2009

Last week in Tallahassee, Gov. Charlie Crist and the Cabinet approved new nuclear reactors for Progress Energy. There are now four reactors proposed for the state, including two by Florida Power & Light.

Meanwhile, across town, the Florida Public Service Commission was hearing why the state’s seven largest utilities — including Progress Energy and Florida Power & Light — can’t pare back the energy they produce through better efficiency and conservation.

Might there be a connection?

Florida’s utilities lag behind at least 22 other states in conservation and efficiency. FP&L is actually seeking to reduce its conservation goal by 30 percent.

By the reckoning of the Natural Resources Defense Council and our analysts at the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, FP&L could, and should, be increasing its efficiency and conservation goals. Florida utilities could avoid the unnecessary generation of about 20,000 gigawatts of energy by 2019. That’s roughly the equivalent of cutting the need to build two nuclear reactors.

Progress Energy and Florida Power & Light customers are going to see sharp increases to their bills almost immediately to pay for new nuclear reactors. But they’re likely unaware that the need to build them would fall off rapidly if the companies raised their efficiency and conservation.

The bottom line is simple: Florida utilities are resisting calls to set stronger goals and to cheaply and cost-effectively reduce the amount of electricity they need to generate. Instead, they are building high-cost and economically risky power plants — this, in a state that ranks in the top three for household expenditures on electricity and where consumers are demanding ways to reduce costs.

The Southern Alliance for Clean Energy and a private consultant hired by PSC staff have determined that the seven Florida utilities could be achieving goals five to 10 times higher.

The utilities claim they can’t reach the higher goals without creating a massive cost for themselves and their customers. This is nonsense. Other states have found a way. There is plenty of experience out there to help Florida find its way.

There is a simple reason for this denial. If the utilities achieved the efficiency we know them to be capable of, they would not have the ability to prove their nuclear reactors are needed.

We can only hope that this election season voters will ask smart questions of candidates for state office on where they stand on this issue. Are the candidates in favor of setting strong conservation and efficiency goals for utilities that reduce the need to build more costly power plants — or not?

If the PSC ultimately votes in October to accept the low expectations of the utilities, the commission would be committing Floridians to pay for a future of ever-continuing growth in electricity demand and we will miss valuable opportunities to lower consumer costs and significantly reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.

Stephen Smith is executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, a coalition formed in 1985 to promote clean energy in the Southeast.

By Mary Ellen Klas, Times/Herald Tallahassee Bureau
Wednesday, August 19, 2009

TALLAHASSEE — State regulators on Tuesday unanimously voted to force Progress Energy and Florida Power & Light to disclose how much they pay their top executives.

The decision by the Public Service Commission means that Progress Energy must tell regulators, in a confidential document, how much it pays 132 employees who make at least $165,000 annually.

FPL must reveal the salaries of 461 employees who make that much or more.

Under the order, the names of the employees would be kept secret but their job titles and salaries would be disclosed to the commission. Only the individual salary figures would be disclosed to the public.

But the electric companies argued that disclosing the pay packages — even confidentially — would violate employee privacy, place the companies at a competitive disadvantage if competitors were to obtain the data, and do nothing to help the PSC decide if the companies are entitled to rate increases.

“We are disappointed with the decision by the Public Service Commission,” said Mark Bubriski, a spokesman for Juno Beach-based FPL, in a statement. “This will ultimately result in increased rates for FPL customers. In addition, this is clearly a violation of the employees’ privacy and could create safety and security issues. This decision serves no compelling interest of the commission and we will appeal it.”

“We are disappointed, and we believe today’s decision will end up costing customers more in the end,” said Tim Leljedal, a spokesman for Progress Florida. He said the company will wait to see the final order before decision whether to appeal it.

FPL will go before the commission next week asking to raise its electric rates $1.3 billion annually. Progress Energy seeks a $500 million annual increase starting next year and goes before the commission Sept. 21.

The ruling came after nearly five hours of discussion in which attorneys for the electric companies alleged that revealing the data not only violated employees’ constitutional right to privacy but would “allow competitors to raid key employees.”

That would force the companies to spend money to retain employees and train new ones.

“What we’re talking about is not whether the agency needs this information to make a decision but whether we need to make this information public,” FPL lawyer Barry Richard told the commission. “That’s not something that’s an appropriate subject for the commission to be concerning itself with.”

Attorneys for the PSC argued that state law does not exempt salary data from the public records law and that any information that affects a utility’s rates or cost of service is essential to the commission’s ability to determine if the electric companies are fairly charging customers.

PSC Commissioner Nancy Argenziano argued that the information is crucial to the PSC’s review of the rate requests.

“The public’s right to know trumps the individual’s right to keep secret their essentially publicly funded salary,” Argenziano said. “We are the only policeman on the block and without that information, it would render us useless.”

Argenziano, who did not attend the meeting but participated via telephone, made the initial request that companies make public the compensation packages of employees earning more than $165,000. She said she arrived at the number because it was four times the average income of residents in her home county of Citrus.

Before the hearing, FPL and Progress Energy provided the PSC with salary averages for certain jobs titles for employees at the companies but didn’t disclose the names linked to those jobs. Instead, FPL offered to have PSC staff members go to a Tallahassee law office to read a “key” that would allow the staff to figure out which employees correlate to each job title and salary.

Progress didn’t provide the so-called key and provided only a list of top salaries.

PSC Commissioner Nathan Skop berated the companies for gamesmanship and chastised them for failing to “respect the regulatory process” by protesting a straightforward request for the salary data.

He called the hearing over the salary issue “a drain on our resources” and said the companies had “selectively responded, dictated what they will provide and how they will provide it, and to me that is unacceptable.”

Neither company had been required to provide the information to commissioners in the past.

Mary Ellen Klas can be reached at meklas@MiamiHerald.com.

TALLAHASSEE — In their bids to get electric rates increased next year, two of the state’s top electric companies said Monday that it’s not in the public’s interest for them to disclose how much they pay top executives.

Progress Energy Florida and Florida Power & Light argue, in documents filed with state utility regulators, that disclosing how much they pay their executives in salaries, stock and bonuses is not necessary for the Public Service Commission to determine whether to allow them to raise rates by as much as 31 percent starting Jan. 1.

But the PSC staff argues that the salary data is essential to the regulators’ ability to “evaluate the appropriateness of the employee compensation to be included in the rate base.”

Progress Energy Florida wants permission to increase its base rates by $500 million a year, or 30 percent, starting Jan. 1. FPL is seeking a 31 percent rate hike that would raise $1.3 billion.

State regulators say they want to know how much the companies are paying their top employees to determine if ratepayers are picking up too much of the tab.

Commissioner Nancy Argenziano asked the staff to find out how many employees at the companies get paid more than $165,000 a year. In a letter last week to PSC Chairman Matthew Carter, Argenziano said it was the obligation of regulators to make sure that the “piggishness” of Wall Street wasn’t reflected in Florida.

“More baldly: They don’t care as long as the ratepayer picks up the tab,” she wrote. “Thus, the PSC is the only policeman on the block.”

The PSC will determine Aug. 18 whether to force Progress Energy and FPL, as well as the state’s other investor-owned utility companies, to report executive compensation. In a motion filed Monday, Progress Energy attorney James Walls argued that if the company is forced to disclose what it pays its top executives, it will “harm PEF’s competitive business interests.”

The companies have supplied the PSC with part of its request, but they left out the names of the employees attached to the salaries and asked that the information remain confidential.

Argenziano countered that if the PSC isn’t given the names, it can’t ensure that the companies aren’t compensating employees because of their personal relationships with executives.

Also Monday, Florida Public Counsel J.R. Kelly filed a motion arguing that Progress Energy Florida should be stopped from getting its $500 million rate increase and instead be ordered to lower its rates $35 million.

He says the St. Petersburg-based electric company has been making hefty profits by accumulating $850 million in excessive depreciation, and that money should be returned to customers.

Kelly made similar arguments in opposition to FPL’s rate case. He argued that FPL should decrease its rates by $364 million in 2010 instead of raising them $1.3 billion.

The commission will begin hearings on FPL’s request on Aug. 24. Progress Energy’s hearings will begin in September.