Florida is now adding more solar power than any other state

Florida has long ranked a distant third place behind California and Texas in installed solar, but it’s now installing more solar panels than any other state — despite a policy landscape that’s considerably more challenging than in other states.

The Sunshine State connected 2,499 megawatts of solar-generation capacity to the grid during the first half of 2023, blowing away the 1,648 megawatts added by California and the 1,292 megawatts added by Texas, according to the most recent U.S. Solar Market Insight report from the Solar Energy Industries Association and energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie.

It’s the first time the state has taken the No. 1 spot in solar installations, marking a potential clean energy inflection point for a populous state with a dirty grid. Florida gets just 6 percent of its electricity from solar and depends largely on fossil gas for the rest.

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Florida’s solar ascendancy is the product of two familiar forces: the Inflation Reduction Act’s clean energy incentives and the stabilization of pandemic-strained supply chains. It has also occurred despite energy policies that lag behind other states. Florida doesn’t have a renewable portfolio standard and doesn’t allow power-purchase agreements — two policies that have accelerated investments in solar across the nation.

Solar policies in Florida have tended to favor utility-owned large-scale solar over residential and commercial rooftop power generation: Around 86 percent of the state’s solar installed in the first half of this year was built by utilities. The state’s largest power company, Florida Power & Light, accounted for 1,769 megawatts over that period, followed by Duke Energy, which connected 389 megawatts.

Despite the lack of a renewable portfolio standard, a ban on power-purchase agreements and the dominance of utility-scale solar, Florida does still have net metering, a policy that pays rooftop solar owners for the excess power they export to the electrical grid.