Legislature finally provides some funds for solar rebate program

In this terrible budget year where Florida State legislators seem all too eager to kick little old ladies to the curb so they aren’t perceived as “raising taxes,” everyone in the solar business was biting their nails over the solar rebate.

After two successful years of the program wherein the State of Florida offered a $4 per watt cost-match for solar PV installations(up to $20,000 for residential systems), the Florida Legislature seemed prepared to knee-cap the fledgling PV installer industry, but alas, tucked somewhere in the morass of the four zillion page energy bill, the legislature has provided a lifeline of sorts for the solar rebate program.

It looks like next year the solar industry rebate fund will be replenished with $5 million. That’s certainly more than the $3.5 million allocated last year, and I guess I shouldn’t be so grumpy in such a lean budget year. But I’m going to be a grouch anyway because once you deduct the $3 million already owed as pending payments for installations already completed and qualifying for rebate, that leaves less money for 2008-2009 than when the program started in 2006. And it wasn’t exactly a national showcase for solar rebates.

Hell, the tiny city of San Francisco bonded $100 million for solar. The fourth largest State in the union (with a $60 billion budget) can only muster $5 million? So with the fate of the PV rebate (by far the largest chunk of the funding) at the mercy of a notoriously erratic Legislative funding process, the industry will likely retrench into what they know best – solar thermal pool heaters – and wait out this mess until somebody gets serious about providing incentives for solar electricity in the Sunshine State.