How to Read Your Florida Power Bill

Why this is worth ten minutes

Almost every bad solar decision starts with a number nobody checked. A proposal quotes a rate, projects it forward twenty-five years, and produces a savings figure. If the rate at the top is wrong, everything below it is wrong, and it compounds.

You can check it yourself with arithmetic you learned in sixth grade.

The four numbers

1. Kilowatt-hours used

Usually labeled kWh, near the meter reading or in a usage graph. This is the quantity you bought. Look at twelve months of it if you can — Florida bills swing hard between February and August, and a proposal built on one month is built on nothing.

2. Total amount due

The whole thing, including taxes and fees. Not the 'electric charges' subtotal.

3. The customer charge

A flat monthly amount you pay for being connected. LCEC's 2026 residential customer charge is $20.00 for single-phase service. FPL's is smaller. This is the floor under your bill. Any claim that you'll have no electric bill runs into this number.

4. The fuel or power cost adjustment

LCEC calls it the Power Cost Adjustment, or PCA — it was $0.00892 per kWh as of September 2026. FPL has fuel and clause charges that do a similar job. These pass the utility's wholesale energy cost through to you, they change, and they're the reason your bill can move without any 'rate increase' being announced.

Now do the division

Total amount due ÷ total kWh = your blended cost per kilowatt-hour. That's the honest number for what electricity costs you today, all-in.

Two things to know about that number. It isn't the rate solar offsets — solar offsets the energy charge, not the fixed charges. And it goes up as your usage goes down, because the fixed charge is spread over fewer kilowatt-hours.

Tiered rates, and why they matter in Lee County

LCEC's residential schedule is an inverted block: 11.29¢ for the first 500 kWh, 12.06¢ for the next 500, and 12.82¢ above 1,000 kWh. The price rises as you use more. That means the last chunk of a heavy summer bill is the most expensive electricity you buy all year, and reducing usage at the top of the stack is worth more per kilowatt-hour than reducing it at the bottom.

FPL's residential schedule is not tiered the same way. If someone shows you a Florida average rate without asking which utility bills you, they haven't looked.

If it's a business account, there's a fifth number

Demand, measured in kW. A commercial demand account is billed on the highest fifteen-minute average draw in the period, not just on total energy. LCEC's 2026 General Service–Demand schedule bills $11.00 per kW of billing demand on top of the energy charge, and the billing demand can't fall below 70% of your highest demand in the preceding eleven months.

That last clause is the one that surprises people. One bad afternoon in August sets a floor under the next eleven bills. It's also why solar by itself often does less for a commercial bill than the proposal suggests, and why storage does more.

Three questions to ask any proposal

• What rate per kWh did you use, and where on my bill does that number appear?
• Does your savings math assume my rate schedule stays the same after interconnection?
• What's left of my bill at the end — customer charge, minimum charge, demand charge?

A good proposal answers all three without flinching. A bad one changes the subject to monthly payment.

Questions worth asking

• What rate per kWh did you use in this proposal, and where is it on my bill?
• What is my billing demand, and does my tariff have a ratchet?
• What will my bill look like the month after the system turns on?