Gainesville, Florida’s Feed-In Tariff (FIT) by tania

Congratulations, Gainesville property owners! You live in a city with a feed-in tariff (FIT) program!

How does Gainesville’s FIT work?

The City of Gainesville was the first in the nation to enact a solar FIT. The city-owned utility, Gainesville Regional Utilities (GRU), offers its electric customers—both business and residential—the chance to invest in solar photovoltaic systems and sell all the electricity that they produce directly to GRU. Participants signing up for the program before 2011 will be guaranteed a fixed rate of $0.32 per kilowatt-hour of electricity produced for 20 years, an estimated 4-6 percent return on investment.

That sounds great! How is Gainesville able to do this?

The FIT was established thanks to the City of Gainesville’s Ordinance No. 080566, enacted in March 2009.

Is the FIT available now?

GRU has received enough applications to reach their annual cap of 4 megawatts through 2015. They are now accepting and approving applications to fulfill targets for 2016.

If you have a reservation for some time in the future, you can now install your system immediately and get market rate for the energy your system produces until your FIT reservation becomes active, at which point the higher rate kicks in.

There is also a commercial net-metering system that allows people with solar panels to use their own electricity, and if there is any excess energy produced, GRU credits the bill. This allows people who missed the line for the feed-in tariff to still install panels with some type of incentive.

Click to check out GRU’s sign-up procedures.