Electric Utility (Duke Energy) — St. Petersburg, Florida

St. Petersburg, the largest municipality in Pinellas County, receives its electric service from Duke Energy Florida, LLC — a regulated investor-owned utility headquartered within the city at 299 First Avenue North and incorporated under Chapter 366 of the Florida Statutes as a wholly owned subsidiary of Duke Energy Corporation. The relationship between the city government and the utility has been formalized through a franchise agreement that, according to WUSF Public Media, ran for 30 years and expired in August 2025.

The city's own electricity accounts — approximately 1,400 accounts consuming 73 million kilowatt-hours annually at a cost of roughly $10 million — make the municipal government one of Duke Energy Florida's significant institutional customers in the area, as reported by the St. Pete Catalyst citing city sustainability data. Against this backdrop, St. Petersburg in 2019 became Florida's first municipality to adopt an official 100% clean energy commitment, with a target date of 2035, a goal documented in the city's Integrated Sustainability Action Plan Technical Report. The convergence of the expiring franchise contract and the city's unmet clean energy targets has made electric utility governance among the most actively debated civic topics in St. Petersburg as of 2025.

Duke Energy Florida, LLC maintains its principal place of business at 299 First Avenue North, St. Petersburg, FL 33701, as confirmed in Florida Public Service Commission filings. The utility owns approximately 12,300 megawatts of energy capacity and serves roughly 2 million residential, commercial, and industrial customers across a 13,000-square-mile service area in Florida, according to Duke Energy's official news releases.

Per FERC EQR data compiled by GridInfo, Duke Energy Florida is ranked 14th out of 5,071 utilities nationwide in total annual net electricity generation, and 4th among 1,259 utilities in natural gas-based generation. The utility generated 13.9 terawatt-hours between September and December 2024. Its scale and generation profile reflect a Florida-wide operation that extends well beyond Pinellas County, though the county and city of St. Petersburg represent a concentrated portion of the utility's urban customer base.

The Florida Public Service Commission approved a Duke Energy Florida multiyear rate agreement in August 2024. Under that agreement, as documented on Duke Energy's rate information page, a $203 million base rate increase took effect in January 2025. For a typical residential customer using 1,000 kilowatt-hours per month, the base rate component added approximately $16.48 per month in 2025, with further incremental increases of approximately $2.73 in 2026 and $4.93 in 2027, according to Duke Energy Florida's rate case filings.

Those base rate increases were partially offset by the expiration of fuel surcharges and legacy contracts, producing an estimated net bill decrease of approximately $9.77 — about 6% — for the same 1,000 kWh customer comparing January 2025 to December 2024, per the multiyear agreement summary. Duke Energy subsequently announced that beginning in March 2026, typical residential customers would see an approximately $44 per month decrease in bills, as reported in a Duke Energy news release.

Effective January 2025, additional rate revisions introduced time-of-use rate enhancements, eliminated reconnection fees, and launched the Neighborhood Energy Saver program. The public sensitivity to billing levels in St. Petersburg has been documented in council proceedings: Councilmember Corey Givens Jr. cited a personal monthly electric bill of $450 as representative of constituent frustrations, as reported by WUSF Public Media. The U.S. Census Bureau ACS 2023 records St. Petersburg's median household income at $73,118 and poverty rate at 11.7%, figures that have informed council members' stated concerns about utility affordability.

In 2019, St. Petersburg became Florida's first municipality to adopt an official 100% clean energy commitment, with a target date of 2035, as documented in the city's Integrated Sustainability Action Plan (ISAP) Technical Report, published April 2019. The ISAP establishes three pathways toward that target: energy efficiency improvements, increased renewable energy in Duke Energy's grid mix, and local renewable energy installations on city-owned and community properties.

The city's Office of Sustainability and Resilience administers the commitment. Sustainability and Resilience Director Allison Mihalich has represented the city's clean energy tracking progress before the City Council, according to the St. Pete Catalyst. One documented installation under the local renewables pathway is a 100-kilowatt solar array on the parking structure at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg (USFSP) campus, cited in city sustainability reporting.

The ISAP Technical Report frames the clean energy transition in part as a resilience measure tied to the city's coastal geography: St. Petersburg occupies a low-elevation peninsula bounded by Tampa Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, making centralized grid infrastructure vulnerable to storm surge and hurricane disruption. Distributed renewable installations are identified in the report as a means of improving localized resilience. Despite the 2019 commitment, the St. Pete Catalyst documented in 2025 that solar accounted for approximately 1% of the city's municipal electricity consumption — a gap that has drawn comment from council members including Richie Floyd, who noted in 2025 that the city had gone approximately three years without energy committee progress updates, and Gina Driscoll, who sought commitments to annual clean energy progress reports.

Duke Energy Florida operates within the City of St. Petersburg under a franchise agreement that authorizes the utility to use city rights-of-way for electric infrastructure. That 30-year franchise contract expired in August 2025, as reported by WUSF Public Media. The expiration created a formal decision point for the city: whether to negotiate a new franchise with Duke Energy, pursue a shorter-term arrangement, or investigate alternatives including a municipal electric utility.

In February 2024, Councilmember Brandi Gabbard formally proposed examining a municipal utility option, according to the St. Pete Catalyst. Mayor Kenneth T. Welch — inaugurated as the city's 54th mayor on January 6, 2022, per Ballotpedia — simultaneously engaged in discussions with Duke about a potential new multi-year agreement, as documented by WUSF Public Media. The city subsequently issued a Request for Proposals to commission an independent feasibility study of a municipal electric utility. According to Florida Politics, city staff expected to shortlist consulting firms in early April 2025 and present a recommended contract award to the City Council on June 4, 2025. Florida Politics noted that the RFP does not commit the city to forming a municipal utility.

Duke Energy Florida is regulated as an investor-owned electric utility under Chapter 366 of the Florida Statutes, with the Florida Public Service Commission serving as the primary regulatory authority for rates, service standards, and major infrastructure decisions. Franchise agreements with individual municipalities govern rights-of-way access but do not supersede FPSC jurisdiction over rates.

The period from early 2024 through mid-2025 has been the most active in St. Petersburg's utility governance in decades. In April 2025, Pinellas County terminated its own franchise agreement with Duke Energy, a decision reported by both the St. Pete Catalyst and WUSF Public Media as reflecting broader regional dissatisfaction with electricity costs. The county action added pressure on the City of St. Petersburg as it evaluated its own path forward after its August 2025 franchise expiration.

On the rate side, the FPSC-approved multiyear agreement that took effect in January 2025 introduced a $203 million base rate increase while simultaneously allowing fuel cost reductions to partially offset the impact, per Duke Energy's rate documentation. Duke Energy further announced in early 2026 that beginning in March 2026, a typical residential customer using 1,000 kWh per month would see a bill decrease of approximately $44, attributed to fuel cost adjustments, as stated in a Duke Energy Florida news release.

City council debate has also turned to the pace of clean energy progress. The St. Pete Catalyst documented in 2025 that Councilmember Richie Floyd noted approximately three years had passed without formal energy committee updates, and Councilmember Gina Driscoll requested commitments to annual clean energy progress reporting. The feasibility study process for a potential municipal utility — if it results in a council vote — could represent the most significant structural decision in the city's electric utility history since the original franchise was granted.

Duke Energy Florida's service territory covers 13,000 square miles of Florida, of which Pinellas County represents a densely urbanized coastal portion. Pinellas County is a narrow peninsula with no inland buffer from coastal weather systems — a geographic condition the city's 2019 ISAP Technical Report identifies as a direct driver of interest in distributed energy resources that can maintain local power when centralized grid infrastructure is damaged by storms.

The utility's physical headquarters in St. Petersburg at 299 First Avenue North makes the city unusual among Florida municipalities: it hosts the regional nerve center of the investor-owned utility that serves it, yet holds no direct regulatory authority over that utility's rates or service standards. Those functions belong to the Florida Public Service Commission under Chapter 366 of the Florida Statutes, as confirmed by FPSC filings.

The franchise agreement debate in St. Petersburg is part of a wider pattern across Pinellas County municipalities. WUSF Public Media's October 2025 reporting characterized the challenge facing cities that seek to leave Duke's franchise structure as substantial, given the legal, financial, and infrastructure complexity of either forming a municipal utility or procuring service from an alternative provider. Florida law does not prohibit municipalities from forming electric utilities, but the process involves condemnation of existing infrastructure, FPSC proceedings, and capital investment that prior feasibility studies in other Florida cities have found to range into hundreds of millions of dollars. The City of St. Petersburg's commissioned feasibility study — with a council presentation targeted for June 4, 2025, per Florida Politics — was designed to quantify those costs and options specifically for St. Petersburg's circumstances.