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Solar wars flare up in Florida as group pitches rival amendment

 
Published July 15, 2015

TALLAHASSEE — The latest flareup in Florida's solar wars emerged Wednesday when a group sided with Florida's utility industry and announced it is gathering petitions for a rival constitutional amendment that would give consumers a right to do what they already can do — put rooftop solar on their homes and be regulated by government.

The effort was blasted by supporters of the Solar Choice amendment as an attempt to undercut their proposal to allow homeowners and businesses to sell solar power up to 2 megawatts and prohibit government from erecting barriers to rooftop solar in Florida. That amendment is opposed by Florida's public and private utility monopolies that want to control the sale of all solar power in Florida.

"This is an effort to deceive and confuse voters,'' said Mike Antheil, executive director of the Florida Solar Energy Industries Association and a member of Floridians for Solar Choice, during a conference call with reporters. "We are going to do exactly what we've been doing, which is to continue to speak the truth about solar power and who is blocking solar power in Florida.''

The new group calls itself "Consumers for Smart Solar" and warns that by allowing rooftop solar, customers who don't take advantage of the solar will subsidize those who do. Currently, homeowners may install rooftop solar panels on their homes but cannot sell it back to the grid while electricity companies generate solar power and can sell it to whomever.

"We believe that their amendment language will lead to a variety of unintended consequences that will hurt Florida's consumers," said Jim Kallinger, the head of the conservative Florida Faith and Freedom Coalition and a co-chairman of Consumers for Smart Solar.

Florida-based solar companies and environmental groups tried unsuccessfully for years to get the Florida Legislature and the Public Service Commission to expand solar in Florida before launching the original amendment effort. Supporters include the Florida Retail Federation, the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, the League of Women Voters, the Christian Coalition and Conservatives for Energy Freedom.

"We know better than anyone that the monopoly utilities will stop at pretty much nothing to slow or eliminate the growth of distributed energy,'' said Antheil of the Solar Choice group.

The rival group, Consumers for Smart Solar, which has not announced its sponsors, includes a bipartisan group of activists: Dick Batchelor, a former Democrat state legislator from Orlando; Screven Watson, a Democratic political consultant; Matthew Carter, a former chairman of the Public Service Commission; Julio Fuentes, president of the Florida State Hispanic Chamber of Commerce; and Billy Tucker, former executive director of the First Coast Tea Party.

The ballot language was written by John Sowinski, an expert in petition drives who has helped to thwart amendments related to gambling initiatives, the sugar tax and the Hometown Democracy initiative.

Under existing law, Florida has some of the lowest solar investment in the nation with less than one-tenth of 1 percent of all energy usage.

Floridians for Solar Choice has collected nearly 100,000 of the more than 683,000 signatures needed to get on the November 2016 ballot and has earned enough support to get a hearing on the ballot language in September.