Visualization: Customer-owned solar in Florida

Research on the political barriers to solar PV deployment in Florida

As part of my thesis research on the obstacles to greater solar PV in the ‘Sunshine States’ ‘ energy mix I have spent the last couple of weeks scrapping, cleaning and harmonizing data on customer-owned (behind the meter) generation capacity of renewables in Florida. In Florida, investor-owned utilities (IOUs), municipal utilities and rural electric cooperative are legally bound to report the data yearly to the Florida Public Service Commission (e.g. click here for the aggregate 2015 Net Metering Report).

The dashboard below takes a first step toward unlocking the wealth of information that is buried in these reports. It maps the capacities by individual Florida county, breaks down new interconnections over time and disaggregates net metering capacity by utility that customers contract with. My work is supervised by Prof. Flachsland at the MCC and supported by the Environmental Defence Fund.