Going Solar as an OUC Customer

Florida's net metering rule — the one that governs Florida Power & Light, Duke Energy Florida, and Tampa Electric — applies to investor-owned utilities.⁷ OUC is not one. Municipal utilities sit outside the statutory definition of a public utility for these purposes.⁶

What state law does require is that each municipal electric utility selling electricity at retail develop a standardized interconnection agreement and net metering program, with each governing authority establishing its own requirements, and report annually to the Commission on participation.⁵

In practice that means the rules are real, published, and enforceable — but they belong to OUC, they can be changed by OUC's board, and the state Commission does not approve OUC's rates. The broader framework is in solar with a Florida municipal utility or electric co-op.

OUC's current rooftop solar page states that customers whose completed and paid interconnection application is received on or after July 1, 2025 are credited at the Community Solar Energy Rate for a five-year period ending June 30, 2030, and at the Retail Levelized Fuel Rate after that — but that during a temporary grace period those customers receive the full retail rate.¹

Two things follow, and they are the whole answer for a homeowner deciding now. First, the grace period is not something you apply for. OUC describes it as applying to all solar customers in that cohort until it ends, and states no separate homeowner deadline, paperwork step, or qualifying event attached to it. Second, the rate you should plan around is the one that follows it.

On the end date, OUC is not perfectly consistent with itself. Its TruNet description gives a temporary grace period through October 31, 2026; its rate table and its FAQ describe the same transition as Fall 2026.¹ October 31, 2026 is the only precise date OUC publishes, so that is the date this page leads with — but the broader wording appears on the same page, and we are not going to pretend the utility resolved it. Confirm your own date with OUC in writing before you sign.

OUC states that beginning November 1, excess solar energy sold to OUC is credited within the same billing period it is generated, replacing the prior practice of rolling credits forward.¹

• Before the transition, a net credit in a billing period went into a solar bank as a dollar value, carried forward.
• OUC states it performed an annual true-up of the solar bank in December 2025, and will conduct a second true-up in Fall 2026 to credit any remaining solar bank balance before the billing change.
• After Fall 2026, OUC states it removes the solar bank from the account and credits generation in the month the energy is received, with no additional true-ups going forward.
• What that credit is worth is a separate question from how it is applied. For customers in the post–June 30, 2025 cohort, the Community Solar Energy Rate follows the grace period and runs through June 30, 2030, then the Retail Levelized Fuel Rate.

All of the above is stated on OUC's rooftop solar page.¹ OUC describes the billing mechanics in general terms and does not publish a separate billing rule for grandfathered accounts, so treat the timeline above as OUC's own framing rather than as a statement about every customer's rate.

OUC states that customers whose rooftop systems were connected before June 30, 2025 — or whose interconnection applications were approved by that date — continue to receive the full retail rate for excess energy sold to OUC through June 30, 2045.¹ Elsewhere on the same page OUC states the requirement operationally: to be eligible for the full retail rate, payment along with the completed solar interconnection application had to be received by June 30, 2025, and its rate table keys on the completed and paid application received by OUC.^1,3

There is a second condition that matters when a house changes hands. OUC states that a new homeowner who took possession and established or transferred an OUC electric account by June 30, 2025 receives the full retail rate through June 30, 2045, and that for homes sold after that date the new homeowner is not grandfathered — they receive the Community Solar Energy Rate through June 30, 2030 and the Retail Levelized Fuel Rate after that.¹ OUC's rate table lists a change in account holder alongside the application date as a trigger.

So if you are buying an Orlando home that already has solar, the seller's export rate is not something you inherit. Two houses on the same street can be on different export credit values for twenty years.

OUC's battery storage rebate pays $150 for every kWh of designed storage capacity on the manufacturer's nameplate, up to a maximum of $2,000, applied as a credit on your OUC bill. It is available to OUC residential and commercial interconnected solar customers, the battery must be permanently installed and paired to an OUC-approved interconnected array, and customers who have previously received an OUC battery incentive are not eligible.²

OUC's own wording on the trade-off is direct: to qualify for the rebate, you must forfeit eligibility to receive the TruNet Full Retail Rate — which OUC gives as currently 10.7 cents per kWh for residential customers — for any energy exported to its grid. Rebate recipients are credited at the community solar farm rate for a five-year period ending June 30, 2030, and at the retail fuel rate thereafter.^2,1

OUC states that condition for rebate recipients generally and does not publish an exception for grandfathered customers, so a grandfathered household considering the rebate should ask OUC in writing what it does to their 2045 treatment before applying. A rebate paid once has to be weighed against an export rate given up for the life of the system. Whether batteries make sense for your home at all is covered in do I need a battery.

OUC's interconnection requirements document sets the technical and administrative conditions. The essentials for a typical home:

• Gross power rating is an AC figure. For inverter-based systems it is the total installed DC nameplate capacity multiplied by 0.85.
• Your gross power rating cannot exceed 90 percent of the rating of the service currently provided to you, based on service size and transformer rating. If it does, you pay for the distribution upgrades needed to stay under that threshold.
• For the smallest tier, OUC recommends but does not require an isolation device — a manual disconnect switch. OUC notes that without one, if it needs to isolate your system it will remove the meter, which cuts your service.
• Larger tiers must install a visible load break manual disconnect switch, located separate from but adjacent to the meter base and lockable in the open position with a single OUC lock.
• For the smallest tier OUC recommends general liability insurance but does not require it. Larger tiers require not less than $1 million and not less than $2 million respectively, with annual proof required at the largest tier.
• Systems greater than 20 kW must be interconnected through an isolation transformer serving no other OUC customer.
• Application fees apply by tier, and failure to maintain required insurance is grounds for disconnection.

All of the above is stated in OUC's interconnection requirements.⁴

We were not able to retrieve OUC's full tariff book at the sheet level on our verification date, so this page states no OUC customer charge, no OUC energy rate, and no dollar value for the Community Solar Energy Rate or the Retail Levelized Fuel Rate. The only rate figure on this page — 10.7 cents per kWh for the residential full retail rate — is one OUC itself publishes on its rooftop solar page, and OUC marks its rates as subject to change.¹

OUC also states the end of the current grace period two ways on the same page: October 31, 2026 in its TruNet description, and Fall 2026 in its rate table and FAQ. We report both rather than choose one. OUC likewise does not publish what happens to a grandfathered customer's June 30, 2045 treatment if that customer accepts the battery storage rebate; its forfeiture condition is written for rebate recipients generally. Confirm both points with OUC in writing before you sign, and get the answer attached to a document reference.