When Solar Is a Bad Idea in Florida

This is the page for the quote sitting on the kitchen table. The worth-it page is the case where the numbers can still work. This is the case where they do not, or not yet. None of these is “solar is a scam.” Several of them are “not this house, not this year, not this paperwork.”

You will not be there long enough

A cash system on Duke Energy Florida or Florida Power & Light (FPL) often takes something like 9 to 13 years to earn itself back in avoided power, at 2026 prices, with the federal homeowner credit gone. A loan takes longer. New Orlando Utilities Commission (OUC) service, if a lot of the power is exported, can stretch into the high teens. Those ranges are on the worth-it page, and they assume a decent roof and a bill worth cutting.

If you expect to sell before that payback, you are betting the next buyer will hand you the rest of the money at the closing table. An owned system can help a listing. It does not reliably return whatever is left on a $25,000 array. A leased system can hurt the sale, because the buyer has to be approved by the leasing company. If the move is already on the calendar, do not install. If you might move in three or four years, same answer. The home value page is the resale side of that bet.

The roof should come first

Panels are warrantied for about 25 years. An architectural shingle roof in this climate often is not. If the roof is leaking, layered, soft, or has less than about ten years of honest life, the next job is a reroof. Solar on top of that roof means paying later to take the array off, replace the roof, and put the array back. That second bill is not in the payback the salesperson showed you.

This is also the weather reason that is actually about the roof. The next hurricane does not have to destroy the panels to wreck the math. It only has to finish off a tired roof. You then own an array that has to come off before the roofers can work. The roof page is which roofs are worth mounting to. A sound roof with years left is not this reason. An old one is.

The roof does not see the sun, or the bill is already small

Heavy shade, a north-facing plane, and a roof chopped into five small faces all buy you fewer kilowatt-hours (kWh) at a higher price per watt. A quote that does not drop for a tree across the south face ignored the tree. Clouds are already in a normal Central Florida estimate. A live oak is not a cloud. The clouds page is the difference.

A small bill has the same shape. Solar saves a share of what you would have bought. If the house is efficient, often empty, or already near the bottom of the rate, there is not much bill left to erase. Nobody’s bill goes to zero. A low bill going to a slightly lower bill is a long wait for the money.

The only offer is the wrong contract

Cash, or a plain loan that shows the real amount you are financing, leaves you as the owner. A lease or a power purchase agreement (PPA) does not. You are buying a monthly payment and a contract the next buyer may have to qualify for. PACE, the property-assessed version, is a lien on the house, and it is not even available in every county. Orange County has said it does not authorize residential PACE.

A “low monthly payment” that hides a dealer fee of thousands of dollars is the same trap in a different costume. If every company that will talk to you leads with the payment and will not put the cash price, the financed amount, and the ownership on one page, stop. The financing page is the comparison. Walking away from that paperwork is not walking away from solar forever.

Most of the power would be given away

On Duke and FPL, extra daytime power still credits at the retail rate inside the year, and leftovers at year-end pay a cheap avoided-cost rate. Sizing well past what the house uses is a poor trade even there. FPL also does not want a system expected to produce more than 115 percent of your annual use.

OUC is a different utility and a stronger reason to pause. Customers who connected after the recent cutoff are not on the old retail export deal. A big array that sends most of its afternoon power out, into an empty house, is selling that power for less than the pitch assumed. Use the power in the house, shrink the system, or skip it. Do not let a Duke explanation get pasted onto an Orlando bill. The utility page has the split.

You think it will run the house when the grid is down

A normal grid-tied system shuts off in an outage. That is required, so the array does not energize a line a lineworker is trying to fix. The panels can be in full sun on the roof and the house is still dark. If the reason you are buying is hurricanes and outages, a system with no battery and no backup equipment does not do that job. A battery can cover a chosen set of loads for a limited time. It is a different project, a different price, and it still does not run central air for days. The battery page is that choice. Buying the wrong product because the pitch said “energy independence” is a reason to stop the signing, not a reason solar equipment cannot be useful later.

Hurricanes, hail, and wind

Florida has all three. They belong in the decision. They do not belong as a blanket no.

A rooftop array that went through permitting is mounted for the wind speed on the code map for that address. Central Florida is outside the High-Velocity Hurricane Zone, which is Miami-Dade and Broward, and the design wind is still high. The hardware has to match a Florida Product Approval or an engineer’s letter. After Hurricanes Helene and Milton in 2024, one large residential installer reported that about 98 percent of its rooftop systems in the affected areas had no material damage. That is the company’s count of its own customers, not a state study, and a solar farm’s survival rate is a different kind of plant. The fair reading is still the obvious one. A properly mounted array is not the thing that usually fails first. The hurricane page is how to get ready, and what grid-tied solar will not do while the lines are down.

Hail can crack the glass. Modules are commonly tested with a 1-inch ice ball at about 50 miles per hour. Larger hail can still break a panel. Central Florida is not the Hail Alley of the Plains, and hail is not a myth here either. A cracked panel is a replacement and, if you told the insurer about the system, often a claim. It is a reason to insure the array. It is a weak reason to refuse solar on an otherwise sound house.

Insurance is where weather turns into a real skip. Rooftop panels that you own are often treated as part of the house, under the same dwelling coverage as the roof. That is not every policy. Some carriers exclude solar unless you add an endorsement, some cap what they will pay below the cost to replace the system, and some will not renew a house that adds an array without being asked. There is no trustworthy statewide percent for how much the premium rises. Anyone who quotes you “solar adds 10 percent” is guessing.

The deductible matters as much as the premium. Wind damage from a hurricane often falls under the hurricane deductible, which on a Florida policy is frequently a percentage of the dwelling limit, not the smaller deductible people use for a kitchen leak. A percentage of a $400,000 house is a large number. The panels can be covered on paper and still sit under a deductible the claim will not clear. Call the insurer before you sign. Ask whether the system is covered, for how many dollars, under which deductible, and whether adding it puts the policy at risk. If the answer is no, or a cap that would not replace the array, or a non-renewal, that is a reason to wait. The laws page is the permit and the utility. It is not your policy.

You are buying or selling the house, and the contract is the product

A listing that says “solar” is not yet a gift. Owned and free of liens, with the permit and the monitoring login, it can be. Leased, under a PPA, or tied to a PACE lien, it is a second transaction inside the sale. The buyer of a leased system usually has to be credit-approved. A PACE lien can complicate the mortgage. If you are the buyer, get the paperwork before you care about the kitchen. If you are the seller and the system is leased, start the transfer early. The closing checklist is the list. Installing a brand-new leased system a year before you list the house combines the short-stay problem with the contract problem.

When it still makes sense

Stay long enough to see the payback. Own the system. Put it on a sound roof that faces the sun. Use a bill that is actually large, which in Central Florida usually means air conditioning. On Duke or FPL, keep the size near what you use. On OUC, be honest about the export rate. Tell the insurer and keep the answer. If you want outage power, price a battery on purpose instead of pretending the panels are one.

That house should keep reading the worth-it page. This page is for the other one. A good project does not need a scare paragraph about hail to stay honest, and a bad project does not get better because the sky in April is blue.

This page is general information, not insurance, legal, or financial advice. Your quote, your roof, and your policy are the documents that matter.