Summer power bills across the Orlando area are about to dip, at least for a little while. State regulators have ordered Duke Energy Florida to return $90.5 million to customers after determining the utility collected more than it actually needed for last year’s hurricane repair work. The refund will show up as a temporary cut to the fuel portion of monthly electric bills and is timed to hit as the early summer bills roll out. The change affects roughly 2 million Duke customers across the company’s Florida service area and takes effect with the June billing cycle.
The Florida Public Service Commission approved the $90.5 million refund at its meeting on Tuesday and directed Duke to return excess storm-recovery collections, according to CBS Miami. Regulators said the money must be returned through temporary reductions to the fuel charge on customers’ monthly statements.
Under the commission’s plan, the fuel rate will fall from 4.414 cents per kilowatt-hour to 3.852 cents per kilowatt-hour, a drop of about 0.562 cents per kWh, and that lower rate will apply for the June through September billing cycles, per ClickOrlando. For a household using 1,000 kilowatt-hours in a month, that change trims the fuel portion of the bill by roughly $5.62 during the refund window.
Spread across the four-month refund period, a customer using 1,000 kilowatt-hours each month would save about $22.48, according to Orlando Sentinel. The relief will show up as temporary credits on monthly bills, not as one-time refund checks.
Where the extra money came from
The refund traces back to an interim storm-restoration charge the Public Service Commission approved in early 2025 so Duke could recover repair costs after Hurricanes Debby, Helene, and Milton. That rider added roughly $33 per 1,000 kilowatt-hours to residential bills starting in March 2025 and continued through January 2026, WESH reports.
Once Duke filed its final storm-cost numbers, regulators found the utility had collected approximately $1.006 billion while actual storm-related expenses totaled about $915.3 million, a gap that produced the $90.5 million over-collection that is now being sent back.
Who sees the biggest relief?
Duke serves more than 2 million customers across 35 Florida counties, so the refund reaches well beyond Orlando, but central Florida neighborhoods will see a notable share of the benefit. Nearly 340,000 customers in Orange County, more than 146,000 in Seminole County, and roughly 75,000 in Lake County fall inside Duke’s territory, with tens of thousands more customers in Polk, Volusia, and Osceola counties, according to Orlando Sentinel.
Duke has framed the move as accelerated relief in the wake of the busy storm season. “Having operated in Florida for more than 125 years, we’re deeply embedded in the communities we serve,” Duke Energy Florida state president Melissa Seixas said in a company statement, per Duke Energy. The company also pointed customers toward payment plans and energy-saving tools on its website to help them manage ongoing bills.
The cut will not last forever. Fuel charges are set to return to their previously approved levels after the September billing cycle, so customers should expect the savings to disappear in the fall, ClickOrlando notes. Regulators say the order is simply giving customers back money they paid in advance for storm work, and the Public Service Commission will continue to track storm-cost reconciliation in future regulatory dockets, according to CBS Miami.
