Florida consumer advocates propose new FPL deal to lower rate increases

Florida advocates propose a settlement to cut FPL’s rate hike request by half, reducing it from $10B to $5.2B and prioritizing fairness for residents.

Miami Herald file

In an unusual move, multiple groups advocating for utility customers filed an alternative proposal Tuesday that they said should resolve Florida Power & Light’s rate case. Signing onto this settlement is the Office of Public Counsel, the Legislature-appointed advocate for all utility customers statewide.

One entity that opposes the deal: Florida Power & Light.

The new proposal would roughly halve the company’s original request to hike customer rates by nearly $10 billion over four years, which is believed to be the highest rate hike request in American history. Instead, this version would result in a $5.2 billion increase.

The company filed its own proposed settlement last week, with the support of big-business groups involved in the case, such as Walmart and industrial corporations. That settlement lowered the total hikes to about $7 billion, but granted large corporations a higher percentage discount than residents next year, while the 2026 hike for small businesses tripled.

“This settlement puts fairness back on the table for Florida families,” said MacKenzie Marcelin, deputy director of campaigns at Florida Rising in a statement. Florida Rising is one of the groups, alongside the public counsel, proposing the alternative settlement. “FPL, in opposing it, have turned their back on the people who keep this state running.”

Bradley Marshall, an attorney representing Florida Rising, said it was likely the first time groups had filed such an alternative settlement.

Florida Power & Light spokesperson Andrew Sutton said that the company stands behind its original deal.

“The purported ‘settlement’ filed by the Office of Public Counsel (OPC) has no legal merit as an enforceable settlement, by definition, resolves the differences of two or more adverse parties,” Sutton wrote in a statement. “What the OPC has filed involves three parties who are already aligned, which is like settling with yourself.”

In addition to the public counsel and Florida Rising, the consumer groups that joined this settlement are the League of United Latin American Citizens of Florida, the Environmental Confederation of Southwest Florida and Floridians Against Increased Rates. They have argued that as organizations that advocate for regular residents, they represent the vast majority of Florida Power & Light’s customer base, unlike the large corporate groups whose clients are a small but powerful minority.

The alternative settlement proposes to do away with a new mechanism that the public counsel previously said amounted to double-charging customers for taxes in order to pad profits. It also would lower the rate of profit for Florida Power & Light shareholders to 10.6%, a reduction from the company’s proposed settlement but still higher than any other company in Florida and, according to Tuesday’s filing, greater than any other company in the lower 48 states.

The Public Service Commission, which regulates Florida utilities, did not immediately respond to an email requesting more information about how it would handle the two competing settlements. Last week, it released a new schedule with meetings set in September and October, including two weeks of continuous hearings for lawyers to grill witnesses and otherwise dissect the case in front of regulators.

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