I live in FL as well and I know a couple that has a home completely run on solar and FPL is now paying them back for power.
I don't know if it still holds true, but I believe you get a tax credit for installing solar.
We moved into a pretty energy efficient home (so far only been in our home 2 years) and our highest electric bill has been about $145.00. So, I don't think we'd recoup the cost of solar for quite awhile.
I am paying around $50 per month for electricity... So you think it would take YOU a while to pay it off? I don't think mine will pay off... It would be cheaper for me to stay on the grid.
But where I am going, electric grid just ain't an option. The cost of getting a wire up to the property dwarfs the cost invested in solar and water turbine...
In the end, I will be between 15 and 20k invested, Though I don't really know where that winds up exactly, because I am only buying 1/3rd of my actual system now - the other 2/3rds being kinda crappy. The good part, I intend to get 15 years out of, trouble free. This is top of the line. Another third is midrange stuff I want 10 years out of... And the last third is crap that only needs to run for 5 years...
That saves me off the bat, but it is designed to stretch out the warrantable time frame of the system at large, and make replacement less shocking... In five years I will have a six-grand hit... and five years later the same... much easier to handle that than have the whole thing starting to fail in 15 to 20 years, and I have to shell out the whole thing again.
What is tough off the get-go is the fabrication to support the solar - I have chosen three 'flower' formations that will retract into the 'single leaf' under snow load or during storms or high wind. And the whole thing on an axial rotor that must not only deploy and retract, but also follow the sun across the sky, both vertically and horizontally, providing best exposure when I do have sun. Right now, that fabrication is the heartache and the headache... and the prototype is costing me way more than I'd hoped.
Just wait till I get my wind project going... That one is another whole thing altogether.
Water is what is expensive around here --- you have to hook up to city water and sewer which is running now around $25,000 per lot and our water bill, just for the two of us if over $80.00/mo. The water tastes horrible; better with a filter and that's what I cook with, but I wind up buying bottled water to drink. Definitely one thing I miss about being up north; cold well water.
Free, crystal clear artesian water... from less than a quarter mile away... And so cold it hurts your throat to drink it from the tap...
Of course it's got a high mineral content, so you'd have to be alright with water spots.
You can take the gal out of the mountains, but you can't take the mountains out of the gal.