The Florida Public Service Commission (United States) has given its approval for Florida Power & Light's proposal to build a new 1,163 MW gas-fired power unit on the site of its existing 3 GW Lauderdale facility for US$888m in Dania Beach, Florida. The facility is expected to come onstream in 2022.
The company, part of the NextEra Energy group, aims at increasing its solar and gas-fired capacity. FPL believes that building the gas plant would be around US$1.3bn cheaper than developing the same capacity of solar energy. The company has built many gas-fired facilities in the last decade and currently gets approximately 70% of its power generation from gas-fired power plants. It is also building the 1.7 GW Okeechobee Clean Energy Center, a large CCGT project expected to be commissioned in mid-2019. FPL is phasing out its coal-fired capacity and plans to retire its 395 MW Indiantown coal-fired power plant in Martin county by 2020. Additionally, in January 2017, FPL agreed to close the 1,250 MW coal-fired St. Johns River Power Park, jointly owned with JEA, in 2018.
Besides, FPL announced it has reached halfway point in its plans to add 2.5 million solar PV panels by early 2018 across eight sites in Florida and 1 million solar panels have begun to power the company's customers. The company has commissioned four of its eight new solar plants rated 74.5 MW each, namely FPL Barefoot Bay Solar Energy Center, FPL Blue Cypress Solar Energy Center, FPL Loggerhead Solar Energy Center, and FPL Hammock Solar Energy Center. FPL expects to have installed as much as 10 million panels by 2023 (around 2,300 MW, including 225 MW built in 2016 and 600 MW currently under construction).