Setting Up An Electricity Account

Now that you're the proud owner of a holiday home in Florida, one of the first things you'll probably have to do is set up the electricity supply to your property. This is fairly easy to do and can be done online.

Florida Power & Light are the company you'll need to contact - they provide electricity for the whole of the state. To set up an electricity account via their website, you'll first need to register for a FPL online account - which can be done in a matter of minutes. An FPL online account means you can look at bills, see your payment history and even pay for services through their website. It is well worth setting up an FPL online account.

Once you've set that up, navigate yourself to a section called "Start Service". Here, you'll need to enter your property address, add a few more details, and an account will be set up in your name.

Whilst setting up your account, you will be prompted to enter in your social security number. If, like me, you're British and don't have this, you can select that you're a foreign national. You will still have to provide some form of identification, however. I found the easiest way of doing this was faxing my photographic ID (your passport picture page is probably best) to FPL. Information about all of this will be provided during the process of setting up your account.

You'll also have to pay a deposit when you open your account - I was required to pay a $90 as deposit for electricity supply to my property. Your deposit will be used to pay any outstanding bills should you fail to pay on time. FPL also pay interest on deposits - 6% per annum - as long as you do not cancel the service within the first six months.

FPL seem happy to send bills abroad - I've received all my bills so far to my address here in the UK without problem.