St. Petersburg solar while the city decides who owns the grid

The grid fight, in the time it takes to read a bill

The old arrangement was simple: Duke paid the city 6 percent of area revenue, roughly 23 million dollars a year, for control of the rights of way, and the city separately collects a 10 percent municipal utility tax worth about 29 million dollars annually. Power Broker News laid out those numbers alongside the draft 10 year franchise, which adds something the old deal never had: after nine years the city can demand a valuation and condition assessment of Duke's electric system, then exercise a right to purchase the assets inside city limits.

Energy has become genuine local politics. A Dump Duke campaign backed by the Pinellas Democratic Socialists of America endorsed council member Brandi Gabbard in the August 18, 2026 mayoral primary against incumbent Ken Welch, former Gov. Charlie Crist and others, per WUSF's reporting. None of that changes a 2026 solar quote. What it changes is the confidence interval on year 15 of a payback model. A homeowner sizing a system today should treat the current Duke rate as real and treat any 25 year rate escalation assumption as a guess wearing a spreadsheet.

Duke Energy Florida is not small: 2024 EIA data shows 1,793,067 residential customers and an average residential price of 16.63 cents per kWh. The EIA sales file is the neutral benchmark we use for the calculator below, because a franchise standoff is a bad time to trust anyone's marketing rate.

The permit file reads like a structural project. It is one.

St. Petersburg is not an instant permit city, and pretending otherwise sets up a bad month. The Construction Services and Permitting Division runs electronic submittals through ePlan Review, with a hard clock: applicants get 10 business days to complete the upload or answer comments before the application is denied and the workflow terminated. Effective October 1, 2025, every submittal also needs a notarized application before a permit will issue. Completed applications go to permits@stpete.org or the Municipal Services Center at One 4th Street North, per the City's forms page.

The City's solar submittal checklist is where the hurricane reality shows up. It demands engineered spec sheets for every manufactured component, an electrical diagram covering the array, wiring and building connection, and attachment and flashing details sealed by a design professional for the Wind Zone and site conditions. A planset vendor that produces drawings for this jurisdiction pegs the design values at 150 mph wind speed, Exposure Category B, Risk Category II under the 2023 Florida Building Code, though that page is a secondary source, not an adopted city document. Either way: in 2024, Hurricanes Helene and Milton hit St. Petersburg within two weeks of each other. The sealed attachment details are not bureaucratic theater.

Adding a battery? The same checklist requires a summary of all standby loads with power ratings and estimated daily energy consumption for each, to prove the inverter and battery selection can carry the backup plan. Budget note: the City's temporary 25 percent permit fee reduction expired July 1, 2024 and fees reverted to the standard schedule. We could not confirm a flat solar permit dollar figure from the City's fee page this session, so ask your contractor to show the fee line from Click2Gov rather than estimate it.

No state credit, three quiet subsidies

Florida has no personal income tax, which the Department of Revenue confirms, so there is no state tax credit to chase and no reason to let a sales rep imply one. What Florida does instead is remove friction. Solar energy systems and their components are exempt from sales tax under Statute 212.08(7)(hh). And under Statute 193.624, the just value a renewable energy device adds to residential property may not be considered in the assessment, for devices installed on or after January 1, 2013. Panels, inverters, wiring, mounting and storage all fall inside that definition.

The federal side is the sober note. The 25D homeowner credit was repealed for expenditures made after calendar year 2025 by P.L. 119-21, with carryforward preserved for credits already earned, as the Congressional Research Service explains. St. Petersburg payback in 2026 rests on the 16.63 cent Duke rate, the sales and property tax treatment, and the production itself. That math can still work. It just no longer gets a 30 percent federal head start, and any quote showing one is describing 2025.

Screen the numbers against the Duke rate

This estimator uses the Duke Energy Florida average residential price from EIA 2024 data and our downtown production run. It does not know your feeder, your panel orientation or what a future municipal utility might charge. Use it to compare system sizes and payment paths, then demand a proposal that respects the Tier 1 boundary.

We are a solar installer and we also partner with other solar companies.

Document trail

Claims on this page trace to the following records, reviewed August 27, 2026.

• St. Petersburg building permits and ePlan Review, forms and applications, and fee schedule page
• ePlan Solar Permit Submittal Checklist and secondary wind design values
• WUSF on the franchise expiration and Power Broker News on the buyout clause
• Florida PSC Rule 25-6.065 and EIA 2024 utility sales data
• Statute 212.08 sales tax exemption, Statute 193.624 property assessment, and Florida DOR on state income tax
• CRS note on the federal credit repeal, PVGIS, Census ACS, and city background