On Oct. 1, SB 484 required each of Florida’s investor-owned utilities to file a tariff for its largest customers.
The law’s core is two sentences. The rules must reasonably ensure that each large-load customer, defined as one drawing 50 megawatts or more, bears its own full cost of service. And the risk that such a customer doesn’t pay may not be borne by everyone else.
I published a rubric for reading those filings on Sept. 15, before any existed, and finished amending it before the first one arrived. Each filing gets one of three results: it clears, it has a shortfall to defend, or it misses a required test. Three utilities made Oct. 1 filings. Two filed new large-load tariffs, and FPL asked the Commission to deem its existing one compliant. Duke filed nothing new and relies on a petition pending since April. The scorecards are below.
Tampa Electric put real numbers on the page: stated charges, a 20-year minimum term, and, in its customer contract, a termination fee covering the remaining generation, transmission, fuel transportation, and purchased-power charges for the rest of the term. Only two required tests are partly met. The tariff reaches only new or incremental load, and security for an investment-grade customer is 50% of $2.0 million multiplied by its contracted megawatts, against roughly $2.7 million per megawatt of committed plant and transmission, by my arithmetic from the company’s exhibits.
The open question is year 20: a customer giving notice can leave owing nothing more, while the company’s own exhibits show about $1.07 billion of generation net plant still on the books in 2047. TECO says that plant would then serve its other customers. That may prove true; no one has agreed to pay for it if it does not.
Florida Power & Light filed no new large-load tariff. It asked the Commission to find that the tariffs approved in January as part of its rate settlement, before SB 484 took effect, already comply. Those tariffs carry a 20-year term, two years’ notice, and an exit fee covering the remaining generation charges.
The miss is coverage: they apply only to a customer with a projected new or incremental load of 50 megawatts or more and a projected load factor of 85% or more. A load factor can lawfully set a price; here it decides who is covered. The statute defines the customer by peak demand alone. That may describe few customers today. The rubric reads the text, not the current queue.
Florida Public Utilities says it has no qualifying customers and no inquiries, and leaves every rate to customer-specific agreements the Commission must approve before service starts. That is reasonable for a small utility. But the filing states no rate, and under the rubric’s first test, a filing with no stated rate misses.
Duke Energy Florida filed nothing new by Oct. 1. It relies on a petition filed in April, heard in August and briefed in September. Its president, Melissa Seixas, made the case in these pages on Oct. 2: “Floridians should never be asked to finance someone else’s business decision.” That is the right standard. The filing falls short on one required test.
Duke’s policy measures the 50-megawatt threshold over 30 minutes; the statute says 15. And it reaches only firm load, so a new customer that takes interruptible service falls outside it. Duke says such customers need less capacity built for them; the statute’s definition makes no such exception. Until a large-load rate arrives in 2028, which Duke committed to in its brief, qualifying customers pay existing general-service rates, backed by a 20-year term and an exit fee.
Two points for anyone following these cases. First, the statute requires the outcome and only permits the tools. The Commission may approve exit fees and minimum terms, but the full-cost result is mandatory either way. Second, FPL asked for proposed agency action, so the Commission can rule without a hearing unless an affected party asks for one.
And one number belongs in every conversation about this law. SB 484 does not reach municipal utilities or rural electric cooperatives. By the Commission’s own statistics, that is about 25% of the state’s customer accounts.
These are readings of the filed words, not Commission findings. Every citation is collected with the rubric. They show a promise written in mandatory terms, met unevenly.
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Dr. Mark McNees is director of the MS in Social and Sustainable Enterprises at Florida State University’s Jim Moran College of Entrepreneurship. He writes on energy cost policy.
