## Facts

- PW Ventures, Inc. proposed to build and operate a cogeneration facility in Palm Beach County, Florida.
- PW Ventures planned to sell electricity and thermal power under a long-term contract to a single industrial customer, Pratt & Whitney, on land leased from Pratt.
- PW Ventures sought a declaratory statement from the Florida Public Service Commission (PSC) that the project would not make it a “public utility.”
- The PSC ruled that PW Ventures would be supplying electricity “to or for the public” under § 366.02(1), Florida Statutes (1985), and therefore would be regulated as a public utility.
- PW Ventures appealed the PSC’s ruling to the Florida Supreme Court.

## Issues

1. Whether supplying electricity to a single, non-exempt industrial customer under a long-term contract constitutes supplying electricity “to or for the public” under § 366.02(1), making the supplier a public utility subject to PSC regulation.

## Decision

- The Florida Supreme Court affirmed the PSC’s determination.
- The court held that supplying electricity to a single customer can constitute supplying electricity “to or for the public” under § 366.02(1).
- The court gave significant weight to the PSC’s contemporaneous interpretation of the statute and declined to reject it as unauthorized or erroneous.
- The court reasoned that the legislature’s use of express exemptions in related areas (without an analogous exemption for electric service) supported treating the transaction as regulated utility service.

## Legal Principles

- A court generally gives great weight to a reasonable, contemporaneous statutory construction by the agency charged with administering the statute and will not depart from it absent clear error.
- Under § 366.02(1), “to or for the public” may include service to any member of the public, not only service offered to the public at large.
- The absence of an express statutory exemption for a category of electric sales weighs against creating an implied exemption by interpretation.

## Conclusion

The court held that PW Ventures’ planned sale of electricity from a cogeneration facility to a single industrial customer constituted supplying electricity “to or for the public” under Florida’s statutory definition of “public utility,” bringing the project within the PSC’s regulatory jurisdiction.


PW Ventures, Inc. v. Nichols, 533 So. 2d 281 (Fla. 1988)