Grid-tied vs off-grid solar in Central Florida: what you’re actually choosing

Short version

If Duke Energy Florida, FPL, or TECO already serves the house, grid-tied solar is the default for a reason: Florida’s investor-owned utilities still credit exports at the full retail rate under PSC Rule 25-6.065. A standard grid-tied array shuts off in an outage. Adding a battery (hybrid) keeps selected loads on during a storm without giving up the grid. True off-grid means no utility interconnection, a much larger battery bank, usually a generator, and no net-metering credits. For a typical Central Florida home with air conditioning, off-grid is a lifestyle and engineering project, not a cheaper version of rooftop solar.

Sales language treats “solar” as one product. In Central Florida you are choosing among three electrical designs. They look similar on the roof. They behave very differently on the bill, during a hurricane, and in the permit office.

The three setups, not two

	Grid-tied	Hybrid (grid + battery)	Off-grid
Utility	Connected. Exports earn credits.	Connected. Battery covers outages.	No interconnection. You are the utility.
When the grid is down	Inverter shuts off. Panels sit idle.	Battery islands selected loads. Panels can recharge it.	House keeps running until batteries and fuel run out.
What pays for the system	Lower bills plus net-metering credits.	Same bill math, plus backup you pay extra for.	Avoided utility bills, if you even have service to cancel.
Typical 2026 installed range, Central Florida home	About $2.50-$3.05 per watt, no federal credit.	Grid-tied cost plus roughly $12,000-$16,000 per ~13-15 kWh battery.	Often $40,000-$80,000+ once storage, extra array, and a generator are in.

Ranges are planning figures for a typical house, not a quote. The federal residential solar credit expired for purchased systems after December 31, 2025.

Hybrid is still grid-tied. It is not off-grid with a convenience outlet. If a salesperson says “you’ll be off-grid at night,” ask whether the system has an interconnection agreement. If it does, you are on the grid.

Why a grid-tied system goes dark in an outage

Grid-tied inverters are required to stop exporting when they lose the utility signal. That is UL 1741 anti-islanding, written so a downed line is not secretly live for a lineman. It is not a defect. It is the safety rule that lets you interconnect in the first place.

So the scene after a Central Florida storm is this: the array is still on the roof, engineered for your county’s wind loads if it was permitted correctly, and it is producing nothing useful inside the house. Lights, fridge, and the air handler wait on the utility or on a battery that can island.

A hybrid inverter plus a listed battery (UL 9540, installed under Florida Building Code R328 and NFPA 855) is what changes that picture. Most homes get an essential-loads subpanel: refrigerator, some lights, communications, medical devices, maybe one small cooling circuit. Whole-house backup, including central air through a multi-day outage, is a different price.

The grid is the cheap battery in most of this region

Florida’s investor-owned utilities – Duke Energy Florida, Florida Power & Light, and Tampa Electric – still run monthly net metering under Florida Administrative Code Rule 25-6.065 and Florida Statute 366.91. Excess kilowatt-hours you export this month credit next month’s use, at the retail energy rate, for up to twelve months. Leftover credit at calendar year-end is paid at the utility’s avoided-cost (COG-1) rate, not retail. Size to annual use, not to a single August bill, so you are not donating summer surplus at wholesale in December.

Interconnection is tiered by AC rating: Tier 1 is 10 kW or less (simplest, typically no application fee). Utilities also cap customer-owned generation around 115% of your prior annual kilowatt-hours. That cap exists so the program stays a bill offset, not a wholesale power plant on a ranch house.

Because those exports already credit at retail, a battery does not improve the payback math the way it does in states that pay little for exports. In Central Florida a battery is mostly an outage appliance. Price it that way.

OUC is not Duke

Orlando Utilities Commission is a municipal utility. It is not bound by Rule 25-6.065 the way Duke is. OUC’s TruNet program grandfathered systems that were connected, or had an approved application, by June 30, 2025, at full retail through June 30, 2045. Newer interconnections sat in a full-retail grace period scheduled through October 31, 2026, then move to OUC’s community solar energy rate through June 30, 2030, and a fuel-based rate after that. Confirm the tariff on OUC’s rooftop solar page before you sign. If a quote assumes “Florida net metering” without naming your utility, send it back.

What off-grid actually costs here

Off-grid means there is no interconnection agreement and no bidirectional meter. Night, rain, and a stalled high in September are your problem. The design target is days of autonomy: enough battery to cover loads through cloudy stretches, plus an array large enough to recharge that bank in between, plus (almost always) a generator for the week the sun does not cooperate.

Air conditioning is the Central Florida problem. A typical Orlando-area house does not use 25 kWh a day. It uses that and more once the compressor is running. A 13 kWh wall battery that looks generous as storm backup is a rounding error if you try to island the whole house off-grid in July. Published off-grid sizing for a 2,000-square-foot Florida home often lands in the 14-18 kW array range with a three-figure kilowatt-hour battery bank if you want multi-day autonomy including cooling. That is why complete off-grid packages commonly quote in the $40,000-$80,000 band, and why rural parcels sometimes still add a propane generator.

You also lose net metering. There is no utility to sell surplus to at 2 p.m. Unused production dies in a full battery. Oversizing the array helps winter and storm recovery. It does not print credits.

Off-grid is the rational choice when the alternative is paying the utility to extend a line, often quoted in the tens of thousands per mile, or when the parcel will never have service. It is rarely the rational choice on a suburban street in Orange, Seminole, Osceola, or Lake County where a pole is already at the lot line.

Permits, code, and whether you can “just unplug”

Skipping the utility does not skip the county. Off-grid PV still needs building and electrical permits under the Florida Building Code. NEC Article 690 still applies. Batteries still need listed equipment and fire-separation rules. Rapid shutdown still applies on buildings. The inspection is about the dwelling, not the interconnection.

Florida’s solar-rights statute (163.04) stops HOAs and local rules from banning collectors. It does not give you a right to disconnect a primary residence from the grid. Some city and suburban departments treat an “approved” energy source as utility service. Rural and agricultural parcels are where standalone systems get a cleaner hearing. Ask the building department, in writing, before you buy hardware.

If the house already has service and you want backup, keep the interconnection and add storage. That is hybrid. If you want to cancel the account entirely, you are making a zoning and occupancy decision, not a solar-panel decision.

Hurricanes: the roof vs the lights

A permitted Central Florida array is designed for the wind map in your county, not for Miami-Dade’s High Velocity Hurricane Zone unless you are actually in that zone. Attachment, flashing, and the engineer’s letter matter more than marketing about “hurricane-rated panels.” After the storm, walk the roof: lifted flashing, a module sitting oddly, debris on the glass.

Keeping the lights on is a separate question. Grid-tied-only fails closed. Hybrid with an islanding battery can carry essentials for hours to a couple of days, longer if the sun returns and the array can recharge. Multi-day whole-house air conditioning is where people discover they wanted a generator as well. Fuel plus a transfer switch is still how many Florida homes ride out a long restoration, solar or not.

Insurance: tell the carrier the system exists. An owned, permitted array is a fixture. Confirm the battery location meets the insurer’s and the fire code’s rules. Off-grid configurations can change underwriting. Ask before you close the project, not after a claim.

How to decide without a brochure

1. Name the utility. Duke, FPL, and TECO are under the state net-metering rule. OUC is not. Kissimmee Utility Authority and the co-ops set their own terms. The export rate is the whole argument for or against “the grid as battery.”
2. Say what you want in an outage. Nothing extra: grid-tied. Fridge, lights, medical, phones: one battery and an essential-loads panel. Central air through a three-day restoration: multiple batteries, a generator, or both.
3. Price the battery as backup, not as extra savings, unless you are on a utility that already pays less than retail for exports (OUC after the grace period is the local example to check).
4. If someone is selling off-grid on a lot that already has a meter, ask for the line-extension quote they claim to be avoiding, the days of autonomy including air conditioning, and the generator spec. If those numbers are missing, it is not an off-grid design yet.

For most homeowners this site is written for – a house in Orlando or the surrounding counties, a monthly bill, a utility already at the panel – grid-tied solar is the financial product. Hybrid is the storm product. Off-grid is for land the wires have not reached, or for people who have decided the utility relationship is the thing they want to end, cost aside.