Installing solar panels in Florida: will homeowners insurance be more expensive?

There are some disagreements as to how installing solar panels affects insurance on homes in the State of Florida, with different opinions and evidence presented. Insurance companies in Florida do not have a problem providing insurance for homes with installed solar systems, and standard home insurance policies already cover solar systems, though with a slight rise in premiums, usually around $10 to $15 per year, or less than 1 percent of the initial cost of the system. This means that adding solar panels does little to increase Florida’s homeowners’ insurance costs.

However, insurance underwriters have shown concern regarding the high premiums of the PV installations, which can be around 25 percent of the yearly operating budget, going as high as 0.25 to 0.50 percent of the project’s installed cost. It may follow from this that in certain situations, installing solar panels might occasion disproportionately large increases in insurance costs, particularly in the absence of a long operating history and with a very few number of projects.

This means that summarizing the information searched for, we could get to the conclusion that the impact of installing solar panels on Florida’s homeowners insurance cost varies from case to case. While in most situations the increase in insurance costs can be quite small, sometimes, such as a lack of long operating history or just a small number of projects, the insurance costs may be significantly higher. In this respect, whether or not the installation of solar panels will increase the cost of homeowner’s insurance for Florida homeowners depends on the situation.