Duke Energy Florida says it will hand $50 million back to customers in 2027, sidestepping a roughly 2% base-rate hike that had been built into its 2025–2027 multiyear rate agreement. The company credits an accelerated tax-credit strategy on a big battery project, which it says shifts federal clean-energy dollars to customers sooner while it keeps rolling out new solar and storage across the state.
“By finding a way to return these tax credits faster, we’re able to put millions of dollars to work for our customers sooner,” Duke Energy Florida state president Melissa Seixas said in a press release from Duke Energy. The company says it sped up how it returns investment tax credits tied to its Powerline Battery Energy Storage System, pushing the full value into customer bills over a single year instead of spreading it over the more typical 15-year period.
How the tax move works
Duke’s approach leans on newly available federal investment tax credits for energy storage and tweaks the timing of how those credits are recognized so customers see the benefit faster. Filings with the Florida Public Service Commission show the Powerline Energy Storage site as a roughly 100‑MW/200‑MWh battery project in Citrus County that is expected to go into service in 2027. The filing says the project is located and structured to qualify for the standalone storage investment tax credit under recent federal law.
What customers will see on bills
Duke says the $50 million will be returned to customers in 2027 and will wipe out the 2% base-rate increase that had been scheduled in its multiyear rate plan. The utility has already started flowing federal production tax credits into rates. It reported in May that about $65 million in production tax credits will be passed through to customers in 2025 and said those credits will grow as 12 new solar sites come online. Duke estimated those 12 sites will save customers about $3 billion over their operating lifetimes, according to Duke Energy, which highlighted the numbers when it opened a new solar site in Sumter County.
Where the money comes from
Investor materials show Duke has been monetizing clean-energy tax credits and booking hundreds of millions of dollars in proceeds that can later be directed back to customers under state regulatory rules. In filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the company detailed how the proceeds from sales of tax credits are recorded as regulatory liabilities that can be returned to customers through future rate decisions. The granular, investor-level breakdown is laid out in Duke Energy SEC filings.
Regulatory backdrop
None of this happens without regulators. The Florida Public Service Commission still has to sign off on how tax-credit value gets recognized and flowed through to customers as part of ongoing rate cases, and Duke’s filings include extensive testimony on how production and investment tax credits should be allocated. The commission docket tied to Duke’s rate request, along with recent actions such as an order requiring the company to return $90.5 million after a review of hurricane-related storm-cost collections, underscores how actively the PSC is managing what customers ultimately pay. Coverage of that refund is available via a ruling that ordered Duke to kick back $90.5 million.
