What TruNet Solar changed, and when
The OUC board approved the change unanimously in December 2024, with implementation in July 2025. It modifies how residential solar customers are compensated for electricity exported to the grid.
The grandfathering provision is the part worth understanding precisely. Residents who secured solar interconnection agreements by 30 June 2025 receive the current excess solar electricity rates for twenty years, which is an unusually long protection.
Customers connecting after that date see reduced rates for sending electricity back to the grid. Reported figures put the new export credit near the community solar rate, in the region of 4.6 cents per kWh, against a retail rate several times higher.
We are not going to state the new figure as settled, because OUC is the authority on its own tariff and published third party numbers vary. Ask OUC what a new interconnection is credited at today, and get it in writing before you sign anything.
Find out which side of the date you are on
If you already have solar in Orlando, the first thing to establish is the date of your interconnection agreement, not your installation date and not your purchase date. The agreement is what the grandfathering attaches to.
OUC had around 10,400 residential solar customers at the time the change was approved, so this affects a large existing population, and many of them will be protected for twenty years without realising it.
If you are protected, that is worth knowing before anyone persuades you to modify or expand a system, because changes to an existing installation can affect the agreement it sits under. Ask OUC explicitly whether an expansion would preserve your grandfathered terms.
If you are buying now, you are on the current terms and there is no route back to the old ones. Model the project on what OUC pays today rather than on any figure from before mid 2025.
It was contested, which tells you something useful
The change did not pass quietly. Sixteen of seventeen public commenters opposed it, and the president of the Florida Solar Energy Industries Association argued that customer bills would be higher than anticipated and raised the impact on the existing residential solar base.
A city commissioner criticised the decision, saying OUC had misrepresented the price impact solar customers have on other customers and that the change could discourage further residential solar investment.
None of that changes the outcome, and the board approved it unanimously. It is worth knowing anyway, because it means the reasoning on both sides is on the public record and the policy has an active constituency watching it.
It also means the terms are politically set rather than regulator set. A municipal utility board that revised compensation once can revise it again, so treat the current rate as current policy rather than as a fixed term of your purchase.
What is unaffected either way
Florida Administrative Code Rule 25-6.065 governs net metering and interconnection for investor-owned utilities, with only its subsection (10) reporting requirements reaching municipal utilities. OUC is municipal, which is why it could make this change at all.
Self-consumption is unaffected by any of it. Electricity you use in the moment you generate it avoids a retail purchase at the full rate, and it does that regardless of what exports are credited at. Under a reduced export rate it becomes the dominant part of the return.
That argues for sizing against your daytime draw rather than your annual total, and for taking battery storage seriously, since storage converts a low value export into a high value avoided purchase.
Florida exempts the added value of a residential renewable energy source device from property tax and exempts equipment from sales tax. The 30 percent Section 25D federal credit expired for property placed in service after 31 December 2025, though Section 48E survives at 30 percent for third-party owners under a lease or PPA.