Why It’s So Hard to Get Solar in Florida

Thankfully that was just fixed by a landslide.

http://miami.cbslocal.com/2016/08/30/amendment-4-would-make-...

But all is still not well. Our state government seems determined to protect us from "big solar". If only that were truly a problem! If you live in Florida, make sure to go vote even if you can't stomach either of our partisan candidates for president, if nothing more than to support solar power in Florida.

Its pretty embarrassing for the "sunshine State" to get its ass kicked in solar power by New Jersey.

In New Zealand the domestic electricity bill is broken up into a fixed daily charge plus a variable charge. According to this site only around 30% of the bill goes towards generation so it is a bit more closely matching the actual costs of the provider.

https://www.ea.govt.nz/consumers/my-electricity-bill/

> This amendment establishes a right under Florida's constitution for consumers to own or lease solar equipment installed on their property to generate electricity for their own use.

I wish that the article would have talked a bit more about how misleading this sentence is. It makes it sound like Floridians are gaining the ability the own or lease solar panels, when in fact we (I'm a new Floridian) already have that right! It is just a statutory right, not a constitutional one. But reading this, a voter who doesn't know better might think that this is some new right that Floridians didn't previously have.

It seems like this bill has a pretty broad list of opponents. How often do you see opponents such as the Republican Liberty Caucus of Florida, the Libertarian Party of Florida, Sierra Club and the Green Party of Florida all on the same side of an issue?

So with conservatives, liberals and libertarians against this amendment, it seems like the only real supporters are the power utilities who had to fight before the state supreme court to get the misleading wording accepted. But given the misleading wording, I'm wording that this just might get passed.

More about this here: https://ballotpedia.org/Florida_Solar_Energy_Subsidies_and_P...

"to ensure that consumers who do not choose to install solar are not required to subsidize the costs of backup power and electric grid access to those who do."

This is essentially an open door that can later be slammed shut in the faces of solar installations that are leased at a discount to the homeowner on the fact that excess power can be sold back to the grid (net metering). It could also be taken so far as to allow power companies to charge extra fees to individual solar users for not using "enough" power to pay their "share" of the distribution system costs (utility poles etc).

I wish there was a way to vote against this and let them know exactly why.

Its a nearly perfect example of a classic political ploy: Enshrine a common sense right that everyone already defacto has (and would be crazy to vote against) in law, but slip in some weasel words that nullify that right in practice.