Monthly rollover at retail, annual true-up at avoided cost
Florida investor-owned utilities offer full retail net metering under Rule 25-6.065. Excess solar is credited at the retail rate and rolled forward monthly, which is favourable and is the part of the arrangement everybody mentions.
The part fewer people mention is the annual true-up, which settles any remaining surplus at the utility's lower avoided-cost rate. Credit you banked across a year and never used is not carried on forever at retail value.
That changes what a sensible system looks like. Deliberately oversizing to accumulate credit means producing electricity that will ultimately be settled at the lower rate, which is a poor use of capital compared with a system matched to what you actually use.
Ask your installer what percentage of your annual usage the proposed system covers, and ask specifically how the annual true-up was treated in the savings projection. A model that carries surplus forward at the retail rate indefinitely is describing something that does not happen.
The 115 percent sizing guidance
Systems under the rule are generally sized to no more than 115 percent of annual usage. That is a useful anchor and it is worth knowing before a designer starts working from available roof area.
It also means your last twelve months of electricity bills are the correct starting point for a design, rather than a generic household profile. Ask every installer to work from your actual bills and to show the calculation.
If your consumption is about to change, say so early. An electric vehicle, a pool pump, a heat pump replacing gas heating or an additional occupant all move the number, and designing for a load you know is coming is easier than expanding later.
Ask what happens if you want to expand the system in future and how that interacts with your interconnection agreement. That is a specific question with a specific answer, and it is cheaper to ask now than to discover later.
First confirm the rule applies to you at all
The bulk of Rule 25-6.065 applies only to Florida investor-owned electric utilities. Only the reporting requirements in subsection (10) also reach municipal electric utilities and rural electric cooperatives.
Municipal utilities and cooperatives set their own net metering policies and their own credit rates, and some credit excess energy at a lower wholesale rate rather than at retail. Florida has many of them, so this is a live question rather than a formality.
Read the name on your electricity bill before applying any of the above. If a municipal utility or a cooperative bills you, the full retail crediting, the monthly rollover and the 115 percent guidance are describing a different arrangement.
Ask your installer which utility and which arrangement their projection assumes. A projection that names neither is not a projection about your household.
Your association cannot say no, and what the federal change means
Florida Statute 163.04 provides that a deed restriction, covenant, declaration or similar binding agreement may not prohibit or have the effect of prohibiting solar collectors or other renewable energy devices from being installed. A property owner may not be denied permission by any entity granted the power to approve, forbid, control or direct alteration of property.
An association retains one specific power: it may determine where on the roof collectors are installed, within an orientation to the south or within 45 degrees east or west of due south, and only if that determination does not impair their effective operation. A proposed relocation that costs meaningful production is therefore worth challenging with a production model rather than an argument.
Apply through the normal process even so. Submitting layout, mounting method, panel and frame colour and conduit routing removes most of the uncertainty a committee is reacting to, and a complete application is approved far more often than one that arrives as a dispute.
On the federal side, the 30 percent Residential Clean Energy Credit under Section 25D expired for property placed in service after December 31, 2025, so a cash or loan purchase now receives no federal credit. Section 48E survives at 30 percent for third-party owners under leases and power purchase agreements, so ask any such provider what they claim and what of that value reaches you, and confirm with a tax advisor.