Home EV Charging With Solar in Florida

The pitch is a picture of a car, a cable, and a roof, as if the panels had a private hose to the driveway. They do not. This page is what that picture leaves out. Which utility pays for an exported hour is the utility page. Whether the roof system was a good idea before the car entered the story is the worth-it page.

What you are actually installing

An electric vehicle is a car that stores electricity in a battery and uses it to drive. At home there are two ordinary ways to fill it.

• Level 1 uses a normal 120-volt outlet. It adds a few miles of range each hour. A short commute can live on it. A long one cannot. It often needs no new circuit, and it is a poor reason to buy a bigger solar system.
• Level 2 uses 240 volts, the same kind of circuit as a dryer, on its own breaker. It is what finishes a normal commute overnight. It is also the thing that may not fit in an older electrical panel.

A public fast charger, the kind that adds a hundred miles while you buy coffee, is not a home project. It needs utility-scale equipment. Ignore any quote that prices one for a garage.

The charger is a box on the wall and a dedicated circuit. The solar is still on the roof, tied to the same panel, sending power to the house and, when the house does not want it, out to the grid. If the car is charging at noon, some of those watts can go straight to the car. If the car is charging at midnight, the watts are coming from the utility. The panels are asleep. A “solar charger” that waits for the sun is a timer or a control. It is not a second power plant.

The utility decides whether midnight is free

On Duke and FPL, exported energy offsets what you buy, hour for hour, during the year. Charge at night and the noon exports can cover it, up to the point the system actually produced those hours. Leftover credit at year-end is paid at a much lower rate, not at the retail rate. The customer charge is still on the bill. That is the whole trick, and it is already on the utility page. Do not let a charger brochure explain it again with rounder numbers.

FPL also sells a separate home-charging plan, EVolution Home. The equipment charge was approved by the Public Service Commission in 2025 at $36 a month for a full installation, or $27 if you only take the equipment, and the energy rate is lower overnight than in the evening. Those figures can change. The part that does not belong in a solar pitch is the eligibility line: FPL says net-metering customers are not eligible. If you already have rooftop solar, you cannot stack that cheap overnight rate on top of it. Anyone who quotes both is quoting two programs that refuse to occupy the same account.

Duke has offered a one-time credit toward the wiring, not toward the charger itself, and a monthly bill credit for Level 2 charging in set off-peak hours, including the middle of the day. Confirm both are still open, and that a solar account can use them, before you subtract them from a quote. A 2025 press release is not a coupon.

OUC is the municipal utility. It has to offer net metering. It does not have to pay Duke’s retail rate for an export. For a newer OUC solar customer, an hour sent out at noon and an hour bought back at midnight are not the same dollar. The useful habit is to charge while the array is producing. The battery page is the expensive version of that habit: store noon power and pour it into the car after dark. That can work. It is rarely the cheap way to buy miles.

The roof system was probably not sized for the car

A commute is a lot of energy next to a refrigerator. A typical home array in Central Florida was sold against last year’s electric bill, not against a car that did not exist yet. Investor-owned utilities generally will not approve a residential system much larger than your recent annual use, often around 115 percent of it. The laws page is that cap. If the car arrives later, you may not be allowed to add a second row of panels just because the driveway is now a gas station.

So get the order right. If the car is already in the garage, or it is on the way this year, the solar proposal has to include those kilowatt-hours. If the solar is already on the roof, the charger is a new load on a system that was finished. Some of the charging will be solar. Some of it will be the utility, at the utility’s price. A sentence that says the car “runs on the sun” is advertising unless the production and the miles were calculated for this house.

The circuit, the panel, and the person who is allowed to touch them

Level 2 needs its own 240-volt circuit. Many 40-amp chargers want a breaker in the 50-amp range. A panel from the 1990s, or one already full of air-conditioning and a solar backfeed, may have no space and no capacity. The charger hardware is the small line. A new panel, or a heavy wire run to a detached garage, is the line that changes the job. Get that number from a licensed electrician for this house. A statewide “about a thousand dollars” is a brochure.

Florida building departments permit this work. The electrician pulls the permit and the inspection. The solar company is not automatically that electrician. A solar contractor’s license is not a substitute for an electrical contractor’s license if the electrical contractor is who the county wants on the permit. Ask which license is on the application. The installer guide is how you look a license up. The same patience applies here.

Do not run the circuit yourself. A 240-volt mistake is a fire, and an unpermitted circuit is the thing an insurer points at later. The insurance page is the rest of what the policy does with electrical work.

A condo is not an HOA, again

Florida Statute 718.113(8) is condominium law. A condo declaration cannot prohibit a unit owner from installing an electric-vehicle charger inside the owner’s limited common element or exclusively designated parking space. The board cannot prohibit it either. The owner pays for the installation, the electricity, the upkeep, and the removal. The power has to be separately metered, or metered by a meter in the charger, and the owner pays that bill. The work cannot wreck the building. The association can require a licensed firm, a certificate of insurance that names the association within 14 days after approval, and repayment of any premium increase within 14 days of the invoice. It can set safety and appearance rules that do not ban the charger or make it much more expensive.

Section 718.113(9) lets the board put chargers on the common elements without a unit-owner vote. That is the building’s charger, with the board setting the price to use it. It is not your private port.

Chapter 720, the homeowners-association statute, has no matching section. A charger in a garage you own is usually your electrical project, plus whatever architectural rule the declaration actually has. A pedestal in a shared parking lot is not the condo statute, and it is not automatically allowed. The townhouse page is how to tell a condo from a house that only looks attached. Do not show the board 718.113 if the documents say Chapter 720.

The federal charger credit is already closed

The credit for alternative-fuel refueling property, section 30C of the tax code, does not apply to a charger placed in service after June 30, 2026. The IRS instructions for Form 8911 say that outright. Public Law 119-21 moved the end date up from 2032. A charger installed this fall does not get 30 percent back. Even before that date, a charger at a main home only qualified for 30 percent up to $1,000, and only in certain census tracts. It was never a statewide coupon. It is not one now.

The solar tax credit for a system you buy ended earlier, for systems placed in service after December 31, 2025. The incentives guide is that fact. Do not let a charger quote revive either credit in the footer.

What to ask before you sign

Four questions sort a real proposal from a picture of a car.

• Is the solar production calculated with the car, or was the car added as a sentence after the array was already sized?
• Which utility, and does that utility still give a retail credit for noon power I use at midnight? If the answer is FPL’s overnight charging plan, are they also selling you solar? Those two conflict.
• Does the electrical panel have room, and is a panel replacement in the price or hidden under “if needed”?
• Whose license is on the electrical permit, and when is the inspection?

If the array is not built yet, the charger circuit can go in while the electrician is already there. If the array is already approved and waiting on permission to operate, do not let a new circuit delay that permission. The permission-to-operate page is a sequence. A charger is a second permit, not a reason to turn the rooftop system on early.

This page is general information, not tax advice or an electrical design. The utility tariff is the rate. The panel is the electrician’s. The statute is the condo’s, and only the condo’s.