Florida allows two and a half of the four things you'd want to do with the power.
Most owners start by picturing revenue — selling power to tenants, selling it back to the grid. In Florida, those doors are mostly closed. Knowing that up front is what keeps you from buying the wrong project.
Where the electricity can go
Four destinations. Two work cleanly, one is capped and cheap at the margin, and one is a legal problem.
| Strategy | Legal in Florida? | Where the money comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Offset your own load | Yes, cleanly | Avoided kWh on your own bill |
| Export surplus to the utility | Yes — capped at your own annual use | Retail-ish credit, then avoided cost |
| Sell power to your tenants | Effectively no | Recover it through rent structure instead |
| Sell power to a third party | Prohibited | Not available in Florida |
Which leads to the sentence most vendors won’t say out loud: in Florida, commercial solar is an expense-reduction and asset-value play, not a revenue play. Everything below is a variation on that or a constraint against it.
What each one really is, and what it costs you to be wrong
Verdicts are ours, based on the statutes, rules, and tariffs — not on what's easiest to sell.
Offset your own load
Clean and legalGenerate behind your meter and consume what you make.
Every kWh the array makes is a kWh you don't buy. The value of that kWh is the energy charge on the rate schedule you're on once the system is interconnected.
The honest limit
This is the whole game in Florida. Everything else on this page is a variation on it or a constraint against it.
Best for
- ✓Owner-occupied buildings with daytime operations
- ✓Warehouses, manufacturing, cold storage, self-storage
- ✓Medical, office, retail, restaurants
- ✓Anything where the person paying the bill owns the roof
Watch out for
- —Your night load isn't offset — match generation to when you actually use power
- —On a demand-metered account, energy is only part of the bill
- —Roof life has to outlast the array, or budget the re-roof into the project
Export surplus to the utility
Real, but not incomeNet metering — real, but capped at your own annual use.
Monthly surplus kWh roll forward as credits. At the end of the calendar year, anything left is cashed out at the utility's avoided-cost rate — a small fraction of retail.
The honest limit
Oversizing to "sell power back" does not pay in Florida. Size to your own annual consumption. The one exception is deliberately building ahead of a load you know is coming.
Best for
- ✓Seasonal properties whose use swings month to month
- ✓Buildings with a known future load (EV charging, an expansion, electrification)
Watch out for
- —Investor-owned utilities (FPL, Duke, TECO) follow FPSC Rule 25-6.065: Tier 1 ≤10 kW, Tier 2 ≤100 kW, Tier 3 ≤2 MW
- —LCEC is a cooperative and sets its own terms — 1 MW cap, and a different rate schedule once you interconnect
- —Annual true-up is avoided cost, not retail
Sell the power to your tenants
Not permitted as a saleThe obvious idea — and the one Florida law closes off.
You can't mark it up. Under Fla. Admin. Code R. 25-6.049(5), submetering may allocate only the cost of electricity billed by the utility — energy, fuel, related tariff charges — with no billing, administrative, or profit adder. Selling electricity to another party makes you a "public utility" under PW Ventures, Inc. v. Nichols (Fla. 1988).
The honest limit
You cannot turn your roof into a revenue line by billing tenants for solar. What you can do is change the rent structure — which is a lease conversation, not an energy sale.
Best for
- ✓Nobody, as a sale. See the compliant structures below.
Watch out for
- —LCEC's tariff states it directly: "Standby or resale service is not permitted"
- —A bill filed in Oct 2025 would carve out on-site generation up to 2.5 MW — it has not passed
- —Any vendor pitching tenant power sales in Florida is selling you a legal problem
Fold power into rent ("electric included")
The compliant versionNot a sale of electricity — a more competitive, more predictable lease.
You're renting space that includes utilities. Solar lowers your cost of delivering that rent. The tenant sees one predictable number and no summer spike.
The honest limit
You can't truthfully say "no electric bill ever." There's still a customer charge, a minimum charge, and on demand accounts a demand charge. What you can eliminate is the tenant's exposure to the variable part — and to the next rate case.
Best for
- ✓Multifamily and workforce housing where a $180 summer bill decides a renewal
- ✓Flex, small-bay industrial, and small-suite office
- ✓Any asset competing on total occupancy cost
Watch out for
- —Rent-inclusive utilities remove the tenant's incentive to conserve — pair it with LEDs, smart thermostats, and efficient water heating or you eat the waste
- —Have counsel draft it; you're changing the lease, not adding a utility line
- —A rent premium generally underwrites better at a cap rate than a utility reimbursement line
Cover the owner-paid common load
No legal frictionThe cleanest multi-tenant play: offset the meter you already pay.
The array offsets the owner's own meter — corridors, elevators, pumps, pool, gates, parking-lot lighting, irrigation, amenity buildings, the leasing office. Pure self-consumption, no resale question, no lease renegotiation.
The honest limit
This is where most multifamily and HOA projects should start. It's smaller than the pitch deck version, and it actually closes.
Best for
- ✓HOAs and condo associations
- ✓Multifamily with meaningful common load
- ✓Marinas, golf and country clubs, self-storage
- ✓Class-B office with owner-paid HVAC
Watch out for
- —The common-area meter is usually smaller than people assume — get 12 months of that meter's data before sizing anything
- —Association projects need a board process and a reserve-study conversation, not just a proposal
Solve the split incentive (NNN green lease)
Needs the tenant at the tableThe landlord pays; the tenant saves. Fix that with the lease.
A green-lease amendment lets the landlord recover the capital cost as a recoverable operating expense or a defined rent adjustment, capped at the tenant's documented savings — so the tenant is never worse off and the landlord earns a return.
The honest limit
This is why so many perfect NNN roofs sit empty. Whoever brings the tenant into the conversation first wins the project.
Best for
- ✓Single-tenant NNN industrial and big-box retail
- ✓Credit tenants with long remaining term and sustainability commitments
- ✓Renewal or expansion negotiations already underway
Watch out for
- —This is a negotiation, not a product — counsel drafts it
- —Short remaining term kills it; time it to a renewal
- —Coordinate with roof life and any re-roof obligation in the lease
Attack the demand charge with storage
Often the biggest leverOn a demand-metered account, this is usually where the money actually is.
Batteries discharge into your 15-minute peaks so the meter never sees them. Unlike solar, storage can be dispatched — it doesn't care about a cloud at 3 p.m.
The honest limit
Solar alone rarely reduces demand charges reliably. If a proposal credits big demand savings to panels with no storage, ask how — and read the answer carefully.
Best for
- ✓Any account billed on kW as well as kWh
- ✓Cold storage, manufacturing, commercial kitchens, car washes, DC fast charging
- ✓Buildings where a single short peak sets the bill
Watch out for
- —Demand ratchets: billing demand is often floored at a percentage of your highest demand in the prior 11 months, so one bad afternoon prices the next year
- —Adding DC fast charging can create a new peak that erases the solar savings unless it's buffered or managed
- —Power-factor penalties are a separate line worth checking
Keep revenue-critical operations running
Priced in lost revenueThe value isn't cents per kWh — it's the hours you don't lose.
Solar plus storage carries defined critical loads through an outage. The business case is the cost of downtime — spoiled inventory, lost covers, cancelled procedures, tenants who leave.
The honest limit
No battery runs a commercial building indefinitely. The right question is which circuits, for how many hours, and what those hours are worth.
Best for
- ✓Restaurants and grocers with refrigerated inventory
- ✓Medical and dental practices
- ✓Hotels, assisted living, and anything with guests in the building
- ✓Fuel, water, and communications infrastructure
Watch out for
- —Sizing to "the whole building" is how resilience projects die — define the critical panel first
- —Compare honestly against a generator: fuel logistics after a hurricane cut both ways
- —Air conditioning is a very large load; be specific about what stays on and for how long
The projects worth bundling into the same mobilization
Engineering, permitting, crane time, and disruption are shared costs. Doing these together is materially cheaper than doing them in sequence — and some of them change how big the array should be.
Solar carport / canopy
An engineered canopy over the parking lot that generates power, shades cars, carries lighting, and pre-plumbs EV charging.
It isn't competing with rooftop solar on payback — it's competing with doing nothing to the parking lot. Shade, storm-rated structure, lighting, EV conduit, and generation in one capital project.
~$3.15–4.50/W installed, structure included — the most per watt, and often the most value per dollar for hotels, medical, churches, schools, and class-A office.
Ground mount
Racking on unused acreage instead of the roof.
No roof penetration, no re-roof conflict, easy service access, and it turns land that produces nothing into load offset. Natural fit for agriculture, nurseries, campuses, and anything with a back lot.
Roughly $0.30–0.80/W over rooftop.
Re-roof coordinated with solar
Replace the roof in the same project, before the array goes on.
Never mount a 25-year asset on a 6-year roof. If the roof is 12+ years old, the re-roof belongs in this capital project — removing and re-setting an array later costs far more than doing it once.
LED + controls retrofit
Lighting and occupancy/daylight controls across the facility.
Cuts load before you generate a watt, so the array can be smaller for the same offset. Usually the fastest payback on the whole property and the easiest thing to fund out of current operating budget.
HVAC replacement and RTU controls
Right-sized replacement equipment, heat pumps, and smart scheduling.
The largest load in most Southwest Florida commercial buildings. New equipment changes both how big the array needs to be and what your demand profile looks like — do it before you size the solar, not after.
EV charging
Level 2 for tenants and employees; DC fast where the use case justifies it.
A tenant amenity and, for retail and hospitality, a dwell-time play. Pair with the carport so the lot is trenched once.
Watch the demand impact: DC fast charging can create a new billing peak that wipes out solar savings unless it's managed or storage-buffered.
Cool roof and insulation
Reflective membrane and added R-value at the re-roof.
The cheapest kW is the one you never have to buy. Done during a re-roof it's incremental cost, not a separate project.
Water heating and water treatment
Heat-pump water heating, and filtration/softening where water chemistry is destroying equipment.
For hospitality, multifamily, restaurants, gyms, laundries, and car washes, hot water is a top-three load and scale is a top-three maintenance cost. It rides the same 'lower the operating cost' conversation.
Installed-cost ranges are 2026 national benchmarks used as a sanity check, not a price. Your number comes from an engineered design and an EPC quote on your building. Anything touching resale of electricity, lease drafting, or tax treatment requires Florida counsel and your CPA — we’ll tell you what to ask them, not what the answer is.
The four questions owners actually open with
Can I sell solar power to my tenants in Florida?+
Not as a sale. Florida treats an entity that sells electricity to another as a public utility, following PW Ventures, Inc. v. Nichols (Fla. 1988), and Rule 25-6.049(5) allows submetering only to allocate the utility's actual billed cost — no markup, no administrative adder. What you can do is change the lease: fold power into rent, or negotiate a green-lease capital-recovery structure. Those are lease strategies, not electricity sales.
Can I sell power back to the grid for income?+
You can export surplus, but it isn't income. Credits roll forward and any year-end surplus is cashed out at the utility's avoided-cost rate — a fraction of retail. In practice that means you size the system to your own annual consumption. The exception worth modeling is deliberately building ahead of a load you know is coming, like EV charging or an expansion.
Can I really eliminate my tenants' power bills?+
You can eliminate their exposure to the variable part of the bill by making the unit electric-included. You can't eliminate the bill itself — there's still a customer charge, a minimum charge, and on demand accounts a demand charge. Any pitch that promises a zero bill is overselling, and a tenant will find that out in month one.
Is a solar carport worth the extra cost?+
It costs roughly twice what rooftop does per watt, so on payback alone rooftop wins. But a carport isn't really competing with rooftop — it's competing with leaving the parking lot alone. It delivers shade, a storm-rated structure, integrated lighting, an EV-charging path, and generation in one project, without consuming roof life. For hotels, medical, churches, schools, and class-A office, that bundle often justifies itself.
Or read the underlying rules: selling power to tenants in Florida.
Start with the property, not the product
Tell us what the building is, who pays the bill, and what you plan to do with the asset. The strategy falls out of those three answers — and sometimes the answer is to do the roof and the lighting first.
We compare the numbers. You decide. If solar isn't right for your property, we'll say so.