{"id":88599,"date":"2025-12-18T23:23:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T23:23:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/88599\/"},"modified":"2025-12-18T23:23:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T23:23:10","slug":"duke-energy-looks-ahead-to-innovation-in-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/88599\/","title":{"rendered":"Duke Energy looks ahead to innovation in 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Welcome to the Catalyst\u2019s Community Voices platform. We\u2019ve curated community leaders and thinkers from all parts of our great city to speak on issues that affect us all.\u00a0Visit our\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/stpetecatalyst.com\/communityvoices\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">Community Voices page<\/a> for more details.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As we head into 2026, we\u2019re reflecting on a year of milestones that help lower customer bills.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Every investment we\u2019ve made in 2025 shared a common purpose: to deliver reliable energy and reduce rates for the customers and communities we serve.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This year, we expanded our clean energy development with three new solar sites in Hernando, Sumter and Madison counties, saving customers an estimated $750 million from displaced fuel costs. By the end of 2027, we\u2019ll bring eight additional solar sites online to further protect customers from fuel prices fluctuations that drive up bills.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We also made major upgrades across our power plants, achieving the output of a new power plant without building one. As a result of the fuel savings from the plant enhancements, customers will save $10 a month on their bills. In DeBary, we successfully tested the nation\u2019s first system capable of producing, storing and using 100% green hydrogen, an innovative step towards reliable, carbon-free energy.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Our teams also strengthened the grid with storm-hardened lines and self-healing technology, preventing more than 215,000 hours of outages in 2025.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">By March 2026, Duke Energy Florida residential customers using 1,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity will see their monthly bills decrease on average by $44, or 22%, compared to January.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As we head into 2026, our priorities remain the same. We\u2019ll continue investing in innovation to strengthen our communities and lower bills. Every project and improvement we complete is focused on building a stronger energy future for our Florida customers.<\/p>\n<p>Melissa Seixas is State President, Duke Energy Florida.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Welcome to the Catalyst\u2019s Community Voices platform. We\u2019ve curated community leaders and thinkers from all parts of our&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":88600,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-88599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88599","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=88599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88599\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}