The programme that built the reputation is closed
GRU proposed the tariff in February 2009 and launched it on 1 March 2009, the first of its kind in the country. It was deliberately built on the German feed-in tariff model, offering long fixed price contracts rather than netting generation against consumption.
The contracts ran twenty years at a fixed rate, starting around $0.26 per kWh with later approvals raising the figure toward $0.32. Against a retail rate a fraction of that, it was an extraordinarily generous arrangement and it was meant to be, because the goal was to build capacity quickly.
It succeeded on its own terms. Installed capacity in the service territory rose from under 300 kilowatts in 2008 to about 20.5 megawatts by April 2014, the large majority of it through the tariff rather than through net metering.
The City Commission suspended the programme in 2014, to help control upward pressure on rates. That is the part usually missing from the story, and it is the part that matters if you are buying now: the scheme is not open, and a twenty year contract at those rates is not available to you.
What governs your account instead
Florida Administrative Code Rule 25-6.065 sets out net metering and interconnection rules for the state, and the substance of it applies to investor-owned utilities. Only the reporting requirements in subsection (10) reach municipal utilities and rural electric cooperatives.
GRU is a municipal utility, so the substantive parts of that rule do not bind your account. Whatever GRU currently offers is set by GRU and by the City Commission that oversees it, not by the state regulator.
That is the same structure that produced the feed-in tariff in the first place, and it cuts both ways. A city commission that can create an unusually generous programme can also suspend it, and did.
So ask GRU directly what is available to a new residential system today, on what terms, and for how long those terms are guaranteed. Ask specifically whether any rate you are quoted is contractually fixed or is set by policy that can be revised.
How to read anything written about Gainesville solar
Gainesville is heavily written about in solar and energy policy circles precisely because of the 2009 tariff. Academic papers, case studies and trade press all cover it, and much of that material is describing 2009 to 2014.
That is genuinely interesting history and it is useless as a basis for a purchase. Check the date on anything you read, and treat any Gainesville specific figure published before 2015 as historical unless something confirms it still applies.
The same applies to installers. An installer citing Gainesville as an especially good solar market should be able to say what makes it good now, in terms of current GRU policy, rather than gesturing at the city reputation.
If the answer is about the feed-in tariff, or about Gainesville being a solar pioneer, you have learned that the projection may not rest on current terms. Ask what rate the model used and where it came from.
The parts that do not depend on GRU policy
Florida exempts the added value of a residential renewable energy source device from property tax, and it exempts equipment from sales tax. Those are state provisions, unaffected by which utility serves you and unaffected by GRU policy changes.
Self-consumption is the other durable part. Electricity you use in the moment you generate it avoids a retail purchase regardless of what any export credit is worth, which makes it the most stable component of the return in a city whose export terms have changed dramatically before.
That argues for sizing against your daytime consumption rather than against your annual total, and for treating any export credit as a variable rather than a guarantee.
The 30 percent Residential Clean Energy Credit under Section 25D expired for property placed in service after 31 December 2025, so a cash or loan purchase does not receive it. Section 48E survives at 30 percent for third-party owners, so a lease or power purchase agreement provider may still claim it.