{"id":365359,"date":"2026-08-07T15:14:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-07T15:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/365359\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T15:14:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T15:14:10","slug":"clearwater-renews-contract-with-duke-energy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/365359\/","title":{"rendered":"Clearwater renews contract with Duke Energy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. \u2014 The City of Clearwater is keeping its contract with Duke Energy and is no longer looking at running its own power.<\/p>\n<p>For months, <a href=\"https:\/\/baynews9.com\/fl\/tampa\/news\/2026\/07\/15\/clearwater-leaders-to-vote-on-extending-deal-with-duke-energy\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">city officials had been exploring running its own utility to save residents money<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>But on Thursday, the city council unanimously approved a 30-year extension to its franchise agreement with Duke.<\/p>\n<p>Last year, the city approved $500,000 for a study to explore how feasible it would be to buy some of Duke\u2019s equipment and provide its own utility services.<\/p>\n<p>Council members ultimately decided against that, citing high costs.<\/p>\n<p>St. Pete is waiting on the results of a similar study, as its contract with Duke expired last week.<\/p>\n<p>As far as its deal with Clearwater, Duke Energy Florida President Melissa Seixas said, \u201cWe have such a long history together, so that continuity around reliability, safety, investments in economic development, investments in nonprofit organizations \u2014 all of those things kind of remain and have a refreshed, forward view for the next term of the franchise agreement.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. \u2014 The City of Clearwater is keeping its contract with Duke Energy and is no&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":365360,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[274,770,28,2287,115,596,275,202,204,203,199,201,200,135,278],"class_list":["post-365359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-app-top-stories","tag-community-news","tag-florida","tag-local-politics","tag-news","tag-pinellas-county","tag-spectrum-news-staff","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news","tag-tampa","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=365359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/365360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=365359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=365359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=365359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}