When state utility regulators approved Florida Power & Light’s request to raise base rates on the bills of 12 million Floridians last year, they not only allowed the company to reap among the highest profit rates in the nation. They also ignored the objections of consumer lawyers who represent nearly 99% of the company’s customers.
That was the argument made by Walt Trierweiler, the public counsel appointed by the Legislature to represent utility customers, in a blistering filing submitted to the Florida Supreme Court on Thursday. He and other consumer advocates have appealed the $7 billion rate hike approval, asking the justices to reverse the decision and order utility regulators to go back through the case in more detail. Florida Power & Light customers have been paying the new rates since January.
The results of this appeal will impact the electric bills of more than half of Florida’s residents. Beyond that, observers say the case could have implications for future rate hikes if the justices weigh in on whether the consumer advocate should have more say in the approval process.
That’s because Florida Power & Light’s rate hike was the result of a deal reached between the utility and mostly big-business interest groups that intervened in the case, including industrial corporations, Walmart and an association of unnamed companies interested in building data centers. Trierweiler and other affordability advocates did not sign onto the deal, saying residents would pay a disproportionate share of the costs so the utility could earn an “unconscionable” rate of return. The public counsel does not have to agree to a settlement for regulators on the Florida Public Service Commission to approve it.
“As the Commission gives up its oversight role, utilities have seized more power,” Trierweiler wrote in his filing. “With the help of a few of their fellow corporations, utilities have moved closer to regulating themselves.”
He argued that the commission has “become addicted” to using backroom settlement deals to shortcut the process, which avoids a more thorough review in which regulators must make rulings on individual pieces of the case, one by one.
“No doubt, figuring out the complex financials for utilities is hard work. It produces days of expert testimony, 600,000-page appellate records, and difficult choices,” Trierweiler wrote. “In its focus on getting a decision out the door, the Commission relied on the so-called settlement to blow past this hard work. … But the Legislature designed the Commission as the yeoman in the fight against monopoly power.”
Andrew Sutton, a spokesperson for Florida Power & Light, said regulators got it right.
“While some parties try to re-argue the rate case, FPL customers are benefiting from the unanimously approved agreement, which enables FPL to make smart investments to power Florida’s growth, deliver some of the most reliable electricity in America and keep customer bills as low as possible,” Sutton said in an email. “In fact, the agreement amounts to an approximately 2% average annual residential bill increase over the term of the settlement.”
This appeal could also impact the way Florida Power & Light handles data centers. Unlike Duke Energy and Tampa Electric, Florida Power & Light has not submitted a separate plan for how it will ensure the costs of electricity-hungry warehouses don’t bleed down onto residents. Instead, its plan was embedded in the larger rate-hike deal that’s now in court.
Sutton, the Florida Power & Light spokesperson, called it “one of the nation’s strongest customer-protection frameworks” for data centers.
Bradley Marshall and Jordan Luebkemann, lawyers representing several resident affordability groups, asked the justices to strike down the data center plan. It defies state law, they said, because it would require all customers to pay for new solar plants and other infrastructure used primarily to power data centers.
The rules “squeeze FPL’s existing residential and small business customers so that data centers, developed by and/or for some of the planet’s wealthiest companies, can pay less,” Marshall and Luebkemann wrote. “This flies in the face of the Florida Legislature’s unambiguous mandate that data centers must pay their actual costs.”
One Florida justice had previously hinted that he was eager to reevaluate the utility commission’s procedures. In 2024, then-Chief Justice Carlos Muñiz slammed the commission as a “black box” during a separate case, saying regulators don’t adequately explain why they grant rate hikes requested by utilities.
Oral arguments have not yet been scheduled in the case.
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