Support CleanTechnica's work through a Substack subscription or on Stripe.
BANANA — Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone — means finding places to install grid-scale solar is an uphill battery, especially in Florida, where the so-called governor has made a career of being a bigger jackass than Donald Trump. So it is somewhat surprising to read in Solar Power World this week that D3 Energy, a company that specializes in floating solar, has signed a master lease with the Florida Department of Transportation to serve as the exclusive developer of floating solar systems on FDOT-owned stormwater ponds. Its first project under the agreement — a floating solar array on an FDOT pond in Orlando — was fully commissioned earlier this year.
“In Florida, the bottleneck on new solar is rarely capital or technology — it’s available land. This lease solves that at the state level,” said Stetson Tchividjian, managing director of D3 Energy. “It took years of work with FDOT to get here. With our first project now in the water and operating, we’re ready to roll this out to partners across the state.”
Unlike most solar projects that take a site-by-site approach, the FDOT master lease consolidates statewide site access under a single agreement. It replaces piecemeal procurement with one master framework for FDOT coordination, which eliminates the fragmentation that has slowed clean energy deployment previously in the state.
