JEA will enter into a $400.8 million, 20-year agreement to buy solar power from the Florida Municipal Power Agency and receive it via Florida Power & Light Co. transmission lines.
The JEA board voted 6-0 on June 27 to approve the two-part deal.
The first part is a $306.4 million power purchase agreement with the nonprofit electric agency that will provide JEA with 340,000 megawatts hours per year of solar power, which the board expects will be integrated into its power portfolio by December 2026.
According to JEA Director of Content and Media Relations Karen McAllister, the power from the agreement will be about 2.6% of JEA’s energy mix.
The second part is a $94.4 million transmission services contract with FPL to deliver the solar energy from FMPA’s Solar III Project to JEA’s grid.
The agreement comes two months after JEA released its seven-year goal of generating 35% of its electricity using renewable and clean energy sources by 2030.
The target is based on the city-owned utility’s multiyear Integrated Resource Plan study.
JEA board member Joe DiSalvo called the agreement June 27 “an essential enabler for JEA to achieve” its goals.
In January, the JEA board agreed to a five-year, $106.6 million agreement with the public power service organization, The Energy Authority, to buy 383,000 megawatts hours of solar power per year produced by FPL.
FMPA is a wholesale power agency owned by municipal electric utilities in Florida, according to its website.
Its first two solar sites in its project came online in 2020 in Osceola and with two more scheduled to start operation by year-end 2024, providing carbon emissions-free electricity to 16 public power utilities.
The solar sites are in Osceola, Orange, Alachua and Putman counties.
“When complete, the project will be one of the largest municipal-backed solar projects in the country, providing nearly 300 megawatts of clean, emission-free energy,” FMPA’s website said.
JEA board member Marty Lanahan said JEA will update its Integrated Resource Plan in three years to explore building-out its own solar power infrastructure.
Lanahan said the FMPA deal and the January deal with The Electric Authority and FPL should be interim clean energy solutions for JEA.
“That looks great to our goals but there’s a finite period of time to which that contract is recognized,” she said.
“That’s why the IRP is so important because we have to get some of our own generation in here for the longer term.”