Ground-mounted solar for Florida homes on acreage

• Best angle and direction. You can face the array due south at a good tilt instead of working with the roof you have.
• No roof penetrations. Nothing is attached to the roof, and the panels never have to come off when you reroof.
• Easy access. EnergySage notes ground arrays are easier to reach for cleaning and maintenance.
• Downsides: the array takes up land, needs trenching to run wiring to the house, and is more exposed to wildlife and vandalism.

See rural towns like The Acreage and Loxahatchee Groves.

If you'd rather keep the yard open, a solar carport or pergola is another option.

• Orange County says all ground-mount systems start as a building permit, followed by an electrical sub-permit; its quicker rooftop "Sun" permit doesn't apply.
• Hillsborough County handles ground mounts with a residential miscellaneous permit, requires digitally signed and sealed engineered drawings, and doesn't allow the panels to project into the required front yard.
• Charlotte County asks for engineering of both the racking and the foundation.

Check your own city or county for setbacks and height limits, since they vary.

They have to be engineered for it. Florida ground-mount engineering packages design the racking and foundations to the Florida Building Code and the ASCE 7-22 wind standard, using the design wind speed for your site, which varies across the state. Ask for the signed and sealed calculations for your address.

See can solar panels survive a hurricane.

Plan for it. Florida's residential code requires electrical equipment in flood hazard areas to sit at or above the required flood elevation, with wiring allowed lower only if it meets wet-location rules. Ask your building department how that applies to the array, inverter and any battery. See solar and batteries in a flood zone.

The National Electrical Code's burial table typically calls for about 18 inches of cover for wire in PVC conduit and 24 inches for direct-buried cable in a yard, with different rules under driveways. Your electrician designs the trench and the inspector checks it.

Before anyone digs, Florida law requires a call to Sunshine 811 at least two full business days ahead, not counting weekends or holidays, so utilities can mark buried lines. Sunshine 811 doesn't mark lines itself; its member utilities do. The trench from the array to your home is also a big part of a ground mount's extra cost, so a shorter run saves money.

More paperwork. Hillsborough County, for example, generally asks for a FEMA elevation certificate or a sealed site plan showing the flood zone boundary and flood elevations for work in special flood hazard areas, and its solar checklist flags flood areas as a special requirement for ground-mounted systems. Other counties have similar rules; ask your building department before you finalize the layout.

Usually not. A single-axis tracker turns the panels to follow the sun, and SolarReviews says it can raise production by about 25% to 35%. Both SolarReviews and EnergySage say trackers rarely pay off for homes, because of their added cost and moving parts. In Florida, moving parts also have to be engineered for hurricane winds.

EnergySage says ground-mounted systems usually cost about 20% more than rooftop solar, mainly for the racking, foundations and trenching to the house. The better angle can make up some of that with extra production, and there's no remove-and-reinstall cost when the roof is replaced. See how much solar costs in Florida.

Florida's property tax exclusion (s. 193.624) covers solar collectors, panels and inverters on residential property without limiting where they're mounted, and the sales tax exemption covers solar energy systems. If your land has an agricultural (greenbelt) classification, ask the property appraiser before you build, since that classification depends on bona fide agricultural use.

An HOA can't make you put panels on the ground instead of the roof under Florida's solar rights law, but deed restrictions may still affect where a ground array can go. See Florida solar incentives.