FPL Asks for a $3.48 Hurricane Isaias Recovery Charge - and a Lower Overall 2027 Bill of $141.87
Florida Power & Light wants state regulators to add a temporary $3.48-a-month Hurricane Isaias recovery charge to 2027 bills - and still set the typical residential bill at $141.87, $1.18 less than previously approved, the News Service of Florida reported.
The storm bill for Hurricane Isaias is arriving the way Florida storm bills usually do: a line at a time. Florida Power & Light announced Friday that it is asking the state Public Service Commission to set the typical residential customer's bill at $141.87 a month beginning in January 2027, based on 1,000 kilowatt hours of use - $1.18 less than the rate approved last year as part of the utility's four-year settlement with the PSC, the News Service of Florida reported via NorthEscambia.
Inside that total sits a proposed temporary surcharge of $3.48 a month per 1,000 kWh, running January through December 2027 if the PSC approves it, to recover the cost of power restoration from Hurricane Isaias and to replenish the company's storm reserve. FPL attributed the overall reduction - which more than offsets the surcharge - to smart long-term investments, disciplined operations, a modern fuel-efficient generation fleet and lower projected natural gas costs. 'Now, our modern generation fleet and continued focus on efficiency are helping keep 2027 bills lower than we projected last year, even as we recover the cost of responding to the hurricane,' FPL President and CEO Scott Bores said in a released statement.
The scale behind the charge is Northwest Florida's October. FPL contends Isaias, which made landfall on the western Panhandle near Destin as a Category 2 on October 9, knocked out power to about 84 percent of its northwest Florida customers; the company says it mobilized about 17,000 workers who restored power where possible within four days, that smart-grid technology helped avoid approximately 138,000 outages, that underground neighborhood lines performed about 14 times better than overhead lines, and that its forensic investigation has not identified a single hardened pole that failed. The settlement the new request sits inside was expected, when finalized in October 2025, to produce base-rate increases of $945 million in 2026 and $705 million in 2027; consumer advocates at the time said cumulative increases over the four years could reach about $6.9 billion over previous rates. Nothing in Friday's filing takes effect on its own - the PSC must review and approve it before any 2027 bill changes.
