LAKE WORTH BEACH, Fla. — The city of Lake Worth Beach is making strides toward a cleaner and more affordable energy future, a major solar energy project is now providing power to homes.
Lake Worth Beach is one of 33 cities and towns operating their own electric utilities, it’s also now one of a dozen cities receiving solar energy from the completed Rice Creek Solar Center.
"It was just a matter of raising our hands and saying that we wanted to participate," Lake Worth Beach Director of Electric Utilities Ed Liberty said.
The project will supply nearly 75 MWac of carbon-free electricity to the 12 Florida cities, of which 13.25 MWac is allocated to Lake Worth Beach’s electric utility under a 20-year contract.
Liberty said they’ve been in a testing phase since November. The city is now benefiting off the newly completed solar center from miles away in Putnam County Florida.
“The power will be produced there, and it will be transmitted to us through the Florida Power and Light transmission system to each of the individual cities," Liberty said. "So, we will receive our share by wire at our city substation and then we will deliver that to our customers."
Under the current contract, the city will receive solar energy as it retires the use of a coal plant by the end of the year. For many residents, like Robert Caserta, he hopes that comes with savings.
"I’ve lived in Lake Worth Beach for three or four years now and compared to other places that I’ve lived; in the area I’d definitely say the utilities are higher," Caserta said. "Stuff like that, it adds up. People are blue-collar hard-working people around here, so not everyone is making buck-o bucks."
"It’ll actually lower our prices slightly or help to put a downward pressure on prices," Liberty said.
Liberty said the decrease, however, won’t immediately be felt by customers but overtime it will help control the cost of energy purchased by the city.
"It’ll be hard for customers to discern the actual amount that their bills will go down, because it's about a portion of our total bill," Liberty said. "We don’t bill customers for individual plants, or one at a time, we bill them for the fuel or the basket of fuel or the basket of plant energy that we buy, so it’ll help control the prices, our prices will actually float slightly with the cost of energy."
In the meantime, he said residents are still welcome to purchase their own solar power, but energy from the Rice Creek Solar center comes at no cost.
As the city moves away from using coal as a source of energy, Lake Worth Beach is also set to receive even more solar power at the completion of the next solar facility in the Florida Municipal Solar Project, expected to be completed by the end of 2025.
"This is going to begin to displace natural gas-based power, and largely coal power," Liberty said. "Coal is a dirtier fuel. We’re going to reap the benefits of having a cleaner portion of our portfolio."
