News Brief 4-24-17
Solar bills in Tallahassee
Eric H. Coffin
4737 Dolphin Cay Lane South #B108 St
Petersburg, Florida 33711-4674
EricCoffinEngineeer@Gmail.Com
Eric’s cell Phone (727) 742-7276
www.GEEintl.Com
Monday, April 24, 2017
Senator Jeff Brandes
416 Senate Office Building
404 South Monroe Street
Tallahassee, Fla. 32399-1100
Sent via email to Brandes.Jeff.Web@FlSenate.Gov
Dear Senator Brandes,
RE: SB 90 tax free solar panels
I fully support your four-page Senate Bill 90 “An act relating to renewable energy source devices.” Please move your bill forward and ignore the 16-page cumbersome language of HB 1351 especially the section dealing with distributed energy generation systems that consume pages 6 thru15 or 63% of the bill.
I think the distributed energy section was authored by electric utilities as a way to limit the sale of solar panels. Moreover, it also limits any other types of home based energy sources that could reduce Florida’s carbon footprint. In general, an electric utility is 35% efficient in converting a fuel to electricity. A home based distributed energy generation system is 80% efficient as a co-generation system and it burns clean natural gas rather than CO2 emitting coal. The following
is just a comparison of the two bills as I was reading this weekend.
| SB 90 |
|
HB 1351 |
| 4 |
Pages |
16 |
| 2 |
Amendments |
6 |
| 2 |
Pages of amendments |
48 |
| 43 |
Words in amendments |
Approximately 9600 |
| 4 |
Citations to other FS |
12 |
My feeling is that if a bill needs that many edits, rewrites, citations, words, etc., it can’t be good. Thank you in advance for your straight forward bill to enact what 73% of Florida voters asked for.
Sincerely,
Eric H. Coffin
NCEES – National (PE) Record – USA
Certified Energy Manager – Worldwide
Registered Professional Engineer – Florida
President – Green Energy Engineering, Inc.
