Almost without exception, everything you buy today costs more than it did last year, let alone 5 or 10 years ago.
Why then, would we be surprised when the cost of electricity goes up?
Florida Power and Light’s (FPL) four year rate settlement with Gulf Power is expected to keep bills low and accelerate solar farms in Northwest Florida.
The merger between Gulf Power and FPL formally took effect January 1, but the problem was that FPL rates were much lower than Gulf Power rates.
The Gulf Power spokes person Sarah Gatewood said that the goal is that all the customers statewide are paying the same rate.
The average bill will increase about $7 a month beginning in January 2022 and then slowly go down through 2025.
“Making investments to making the grid stronger to make more resilient so when a hurricane hits we can get the power back up faster,” Gatewood said.
Gulf Power is going into Northwest Florida neighborhoods where outages have been high and moving those powerlines underground.
The real change Northwest Floridians will be seeing is the construction of solar panel farms.
“Solar takes the place of other sources of fuel like coal or natural gas,” Gatewood said.
Gulf Power said they plan on building 10 solar farms in Northwest Florida and one farm is already up and running in Jackson County.
“It used to be much more expensive and as costs continue to come down we’re able to build the solar farms in a cost effective way,” Gatewood said.
Residents will notice the price hikes beginning in January on their bill.
The increase is based on about 1,000 kilowatts of usage per month.
