What do I need from my Florida city and my utility before solar can switch on?

Two approvals: the local permit and the utility agreement

Your city or county issues the building permit, and your utility signs an interconnection agreement. Section 553.79, as the statute pages cited here read, has local permits carry "reasonable fees adopted by the enforcing agency" and has each enforcing agency post every permit application type and its attachments on its website. Section 553.791 lets a private provider handle a single-trade inspection or plan review, which it defines to include solar energy and energy storage installations or alterations.

Those two sections don't cap solar permit fees or require automated solar permitting, so ask your building department for its own fee row and review time when you apply.

On the utility side, section 366.91 has the Public Service Commission set the requirements for investor-owned utilities, while municipal utilities and rural electric cooperatives run net metering programs under their own governing boards.

Florida's utility fees and local permit rows

Interconnection and permit charges come from utilities and local agencies, so there's no estimate row here, only their own figures. The table lists the Tier 2 application fees and the local rows we could confirm, each with its date and caveat.

The rows leave out the system itself and fees beyond the solar line. If a quote itemizes permit and interconnection costs, compare it with the lines for your utility and your county or city.

Each figure is a charge as a utility or local agency prints it, not an estimate. A row's note gives its source date, and a medium-confidence row names its caveat. Full method. Prices as of Oct 24, 2026.

Rule 25-6.065: tiers, fees and insurance

Tier 1 is 10 kW or less, Tier 2 more than 10 kW to 100 kW, and Tier 3 more than 100 kW to 2 MW. Tier 1 customers are charged no fees beyond what other retail customers pay, application fees included, and need no liability insurance. Each investor-owned utility may propose a cost-based standard application fee for Tiers 2 and 3 and a Tier 3 study charge, and insurance tops out at $1 million for Tier 2 and $2 million for Tier 3.

FPL charges $400 at Tier 2, with liability insurance of at least $1 million, and $1,000 at Tier 3, which covers its Fast Track screens. At Tier 1 it signs the agreement within 30 calendar days of a complete application and pre-approves the system before installation, and a system of 50 kW or more needs three-phase service. Its tier sheets are tariff pages that may carry older effective dates.

Tampa Electric charges $250 at Tier 2 with $1,000,000 of general liability insurance renewed every year, and $500 at Tier 3 with $2,000,000. Approval can take up to 30 calendar days from a complete application, a visible load-break manual disconnect is required, and a $37 fee applies if an inspection can't be completed.

Duke Energy Florida is investor-owned too, so the same tier limits apply. Its 2026 response to PSC staff reported 881 Tier 2 and Tier 3 applications in 2025 that paired a customer-owned generator with a battery, each given technical review and a field inspection.

Utilities that set their own terms

OUC keeps the full retail rate through June 30, 2045 for customers interconnected before July 1, 2025. Customers interconnected on or after that date get its Community Solar Energy Rate for five years, through June 30, 2030, and then the Retail Fuel Rate, with a grace period through October 31, 2026. From November 1, 2026, OUC retires the solar bank and credits exports straight to the account under TruNet Solar. The page is partly ambiguous about which rate applies from that date, so read it before you sign.

Lakeland Electric offers net metering to residential systems up to 10 kW and commercial systems up to 500 kW, crediting exports at the full retail rate. JEA assigns customers with a PV meter its PV Billing Rate and compares the kWh it delivers with the kWh your system returns; ask JEA for its fee and credit figures.

SolarAPP+ and permit timing

The SolarAPP+ Foundation's table, as displayed on October 24, 2026, showed only the entries from Adelanto to Santa Barbara County, and Palm Beach County was the one Florida entry in that span. Florida places later in the alphabet, among them St. Petersburg, Spring Hill, Tallahassee, Tampa and West Palm Beach, weren't visible, so a missing name tells you nothing about a city's status.

For timing, the only figure is national: Berkeley Lab's 2026 Data Update gives a median of 6 days from permit application to issue for PV-only systems installed in 2025, and 3 days for PV with storage. Miami's fee schedule adds a deadline of its own: solar applications are to be processed within three business days of receipt.

The local fee rows

Miami waives all city building permit fees for solar on residential and commercial property under Sec. 10-18(b)(5), though state and Miami-Dade County surcharges still apply. Lakeland lists $72 for a photovoltaic permit among its electrical fees. Hernando County's Resolution 2026-037, which covers unincorporated Spring Hill, lists $180 for a residential photovoltaic system.

Pompano Beach charges $260 per trade for systems up to 10 kW, and $260 plus $10 per kW above 10 kW per trade for larger ones. Tallahassee's schedule, which prints no date, lists $70.07 for the first kW and $8.69 for each additional kW. Lee County, which issues permits in Lehigh Acres, lists $25 for plan review, $25 for regulatory review and $50 per required PV inspection, with application, technology and operational support fees added to each application in amounts it doesn't total. Hillsborough County's document for Brandon and Riverview lists $250 in a single-trade table and $750 in a second table for plan review projects, and which one a home system pays isn't confirmed.

What can't wait with a connection fault

What to decide before the applications are filed

1. Name your utility from the latest bill, because FPL, Tampa Electric, Duke, OUC, Lakeland and JEA print different terms.
2. Get the names of whoever files the utility application and pulls the permit, and who pays each charge.
3. Keep the signed interconnection agreement with the contract papers.

Who gives the permit and who allows the connection

Your city or county building department issues the permit and your electric utility signs the agreement. Ask the department for its solar fee row and its posted application types, and ask your utility which tier your system falls into.

Ask for the company's contractor license number and look it up with your state's licensing board before you sign.

Questions people ask

Keep reading

Guides

• Utility interconnection timelines: what DTE, Consumers Energy, PG&E, SCE and SDG&E say
• Net metering, distributed generation and net billing: how each state credits the power you send out
• Solar quotes: what to compare, and what to get in writing, before you sign

Related services

• Solar panel installation
• Solar battery storage
• Ground-mount solar
• System inspection

Florida licensing, code and permit facts · Report a wrong price or rule