After serving my country for 10 years in the U.S. Navy, I opened my own business, A1A Solar Contracting, Inc., in Jacksonville.
Since 2010, our solar installation company has grown from a small team installing one panel at a time in our hometown of Fernandina Beach into a multi-million-dollar company with clients and thousands of customers.
Despite our success in the Sunshine State, I experienced firsthand how quickly everything can be ripped away when politicians fail to consider the way their drastic actions to throw out the state’s successful consumer solar policy trickle down to local businesses. Now, as Florida lawmakers consider utility-backed legislation that would undermine rooftop solar statewide, I urge them to consider how small businesses such as my own will pay the price.
In 2018, JEA, the local utility authority, eliminated what is commonly known as “net-metering.” For those who use solar energy to power their homes — and for Florida’s solar installers themselves — net metering is a lifeline. Since 2008, this simple policy has allowed homeowners who invested their own money in solar to be credited by utilities for the excess clean power they generate and send back to the grid for everyone to use and the utility to re-sell at retail.
As soon as the JEA decision went into effect, we found ourselves in a financial tailspin. In a matter of months, I was forced to lay off several of my team members. We went from 51 employees to 21 employees in a matter of months.
In fact, the only reason we were able to keep our lights on was our clients outside the Jacksonville area. If our customers had been limited to those solely within the city limits, I cannot imagine where our business would be today — or if we’d even still be in business.
State lawmakers shouldn’t just heed the warning signs from of Jacksonville. In states like Nevada and Hawaii, which effectively ended their net metering policies, the industry job losses were catastrophic and swift.
Florida’s budding solar industry and the workers who depend on it would be crushed if the bills being considered in Tallahassee were ever to make their way into law. According to a 2021 report from Conservatives for Clean Energy, our state’s rooftop solar industry has an $18 billion annual impact, supporting over 40,000 good-paying jobs and more than $3 billion in household income. The industry — and the Sunshine State’s economy — have net metering to thank.
Unfortunately, some in our state believe the false notion that solar customers aren’t paying their fair share. This is hard to understand when you consider how solar customers are already subject to minimum bills, connection fees, and a slew of other utility charges. As if that weren’t enough, the proposed legislation would allow utilities to slap solar homeowners with new fees that can’t be seen as anything other than a tax.
These punitive fixed charges are perhaps the worst part of this misguided legislation, eliminating the rightful cost-savings associated with solar energy – and destroying its economic viability.
Solar customers and the businesses who drive this industry aren’t looking for a handout. We simply want politicians to defend the freedom to use rooftop solar — as do the vast majority of Florida voters. Perhaps the worst part of slowing the adoption of rooftop solar is the lost opportunity to diversify our energy sources and add needed electric capacity for Florida’s major growth and the rapid adoption of EVs.
Instead of obstructing innovation and penalizing small businesses such as my own, Florida lawmakers should be supporting the rooftop solar industry. I urge state lawmakers and Gov. Ron DeSantis to oppose ongoing efforts to pull the plug on net metering. Florida homeowners and small businesses just can’t afford a tax on sunshine.
Pete Wilking is the founder and President of A1A Solar Contracting, Inc.
