FPL says Florida Supreme Court should uphold rates

TALLAHASSEE –  Florida Power & Light on Wednesday urged the state Supreme Court to reject challenges to a settlement that elevated electrical rates, arguing the controversial plan is within the “public interest.”

Four teams appealed to the Supreme Court after the state Public Service Commission accredited the four-year settlement. 

In a 111-page transient filed Wednesday, attorneys for FPL urged the court docket to uphold the settlement, which was reached final yr and addresses a sequence of points resembling rates, profitability, and solar-power enlargement.

“The current settlement enables FPL to continue its focus on improving service delivery, realize additional efficiencies in operations, and create even stronger customer value, all while providing a high degree of base-rate certainty for customers for at least four years,” the transient stated.

But in briefs filed in April, opponents blasted the settlement and disputed that it was within the public curiosity, a authorized take a look at in utility instances.

In half, they took problem with the quantities of revenue FPL would be capable of earn underneath the settlement. 

Those income, measured by what is called a return on fairness, would exceed the quantities that might be earned by Duke Energy Florida and Tampa Electric Co.

“If allowed to stand, the 2021 FPL settlement will result in FPL’s customers paying hundreds of millions of dollars per year, totaling in the billions of dollars, in excessive costs over the next four years,” attorneys for the group Floridians Against Increased Rates wrote in an April transient. 

“This is a gross miscarriage of justice — imposed on FPL’s customers by the PSC’s (Public Service Commission’s) failure to act consistently with its own contemporaneous decisions — and the (Supreme) Court should reverse the order accordingly.”

FPL in March 2021 filed a base-rate proposal on the fee and later reached a settlement with the state Office of Public Counsel, which represents shoppers in utility points, and teams such because the Florida Retail Federation, and the Florida Industrial Power Users Group, and the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. 

The fee later signed off on the settlement, which included decrease charge will increase in 2022 and 2023 than FPL had initially proposed.

The settlement led to a $692 million charge enhance in January and can permit one other $560 million hike in January 2023. 

It additionally will permit will increase in 2024 and 2025 to pay for solar-energy initiatives.

The plan additionally included a merger between FPL and Northwest Florida’s former Gulf Power. 

That merger, which formally took impact initially of 2021, got here with points such because the utilities having extensively totally different rates.

As a outcome, the settlement included what was described as a “transition rider” that led to Northwest Florida clients paying greater than FPL clients in different areas.

In addition to Floridians Against Increased Rates, the teams Florida Rising, the League of United Latin American Citizens of Florida, and the Environmental Confederation of Southwest Florida challenged the fee’s approval of the settlement.

The challenges cope with quite a few points, resembling a part of the settlement that set a spread for FPL’s allowed return on fairness. 

That vary consists of what is called a “midpoint” of 10.6 %.

While the challengers contend that’s extreme, FPL stated in Wednesday’s transient that the settlement is “designed to preserve FPL’s financial strength” and that the return-on-equity midpoint was elevated solely barely from the previous.

“The record evidence demonstrates that making investments necessary to continue to provide customers with safe and reliable power requires financial strength,” the transient stated. 

“This settlement allows FPL to maintain the financial strength it needs.”

While in a roundabout way part of the Supreme Court case, FPL clients and native authorities officers in Northwest Florida have inundated the fee in latest months with requests to re-evaluate the utility’s rates. 

In addition to greater base rates, clients even have confronted elevated prices associated to pure fuel for energy vegetation.

“In short, I request that PSC staff be directed to re-investigate FPL’s rate increase filings for accuracy, review the current rates effective January 1, to ensure they are fair and reasonable, and, if necessary, direct FPL … to address inadequacies in fuel diversity and fuel supply reliability which have resulted in unconscionable fuel charges to FPL customers following the rate increase which was effective January 1, 2022,” DeFuniak Springs City Manager Robert Thompson wrote to the fee final month.