The public counsel who was appointed by the Florida Legislature to represent utility customers eviscerated a deal proposed by Florida Power & Light and mostly big-business interest groups to settle the utility’s rate case, saying Monday the proposal would result in an “unconscionable” rate of return for shareholders and “unfair, unjust, and unaffordable” rates for residents.
The proposed settlement “is in the special interest of a few,” Walt Trierweiler wrote in new filings, in which he repeatedly referred to the settlement as the “Special Interest Parties’ Proposal.”
It’s also not legally valid, he argued, because it doesn’t represent a compromise between parties that were genuinely at odds and is therefore “against public policy, and against the public interest.”
Trierweiler’s statements came in paperwork that essentially represents the closing arguments in Florida Power & Light’s historically large rate case, which began early this year.
Regulators on the Florida Public Service Commission, who are all appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, will soon decide how the case will end — a verdict that will affect the monthly bills of roughly 12 million Floridians for the next four years. The utility commission is scheduled to meet Nov. 20 to vote on whether to approve the deal.
The company’s initial request was to hike its customers’ base rates by nearly $10 billion over four years, the largest in American history, with a rate of shareholder profit at 11.9% that would have been the highest in the nation.
Base rates are a major component of electric bills, which also include other charges for things like fuel and storm recovery.
The settlement proposes to lower the total increase to about $7 billion, with a range of shareholder profit with a midpoint of 10.95% — which would still be the highest in the lower 48 states, according to Trierweiler’s filing. This rate of return, he wrote, would result in the company charging customers $900 million “in excess revenues” over four years.
In addition to Florida Power & Light, the groups backing the deal include a federation of retail companies, industrial corporations and Walmart.
Under the deal, revenue from all customers would subsidize increasing discounts on large companies’ energy usage during peak times.
The company also filed its arguments Monday, saying the rate hikes are reasonable and necessary for it to accommodate its growing customer count.
Even with this proposal, “FPL residential customers will be paying lower bills in 2026 than they were 20 years prior, when adjusted for inflation,” the company’s filings read. “Very few, if any, providers of goods and services can say this.”
The settlement includes a version of a tax mechanism that Trierweiler has repeatedly argued amounts to double-charging customers in order to boost earnings.
A group of pro-consumer and environmental organizations agreed, arguing Monday that this maneuver creates a “slush fund” for Florida Power & Light that it can use to maximize its shareholder profits at the very top of its allowed range — which would mean it could actually earn an 11.95% rate of return, well above any other electric utility nationwide.
“If this settlement — with all of the self-dealing, cross-subsidies from unrepresented parties, and the fatally flawed (analysis) as the only justification for FPL’s new generation ‘needs’ — is not against the public interest, then no settlement ever could be,” wrote the three environmental lawyers, Bradley Marshall, Jordan Luebkemann and Danielle McManamon.
The company has contended that this accounting strategy benefits customers by allowing Florida Power & Light to go longer without asking for another rate hike.
Its lawyers reiterated that argument Monday, writing that the mechanism means “FPL will be able to continue to maintain low bills and high reliability for customers for the full four-year term, avoiding the need for additional rate cases.”
In addition to Florida Power & Light’s shareholder profit, the case tackles potential regulations for data centers, tech facilities that power artificial intelligence programs and guzzle massive amounts of energy.
Regulators’ decision on this portion of the case will likely set a precedent for how much Floridians are on the hook to pay for the infrastructure required for data centers, which have so far proliferated in a handful of other states but could be coming to Florida soon.
©2025 Tampa Bay Times. Visit tampabay.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
