Florida Power & Light is reopening its solar incentive program May 3. But if you’re in FPL’s service area and you want to install solar hot water or photovoltaics, you might want to start working on your application now. After all the last three times the state’s largest utility offered the solar incentives, the PV incentives were snatched up almost instantly.

Perhaps the rich nature of the benefits is the culprit for the fast fulfillment time. Under the program residents an incentive of $2,000 per kilowatt of the rated DC output of a PV system, with a cap of $20,000. Businesses applying for the incentive can receive the same rebate for systems up to 10 kilowatts, then the rebate level falls to $1.50 per watt for systems between 10 kilowatts and up to 25 kilowatts. Systems greater than that in size can qualify for a $1 per watt rebate. Under the incentive businesses with multiple locations can receive a total of up to $150,000 in rebates per funding year, FPL said.

Then again maybe it’s the amount of funding available. Under this round of incentives FPL is offering roughly $3.3 million in incentives on a first-come, first-served basis. It’s part of the utility’s larger planned offering of $15.5 million in solar rebates for 2012.

The first round of rebates for 2012 was actually offered in late October 2011. At that point it offered $4 million in rebates. “[Of the $4 million, only] $500,000 will be carried over to the second solar rebate period from the first from cancelled rebate reservations,” said FPL spokesperson Marie Bertot.

The former tranches of funding have helped a lot of FPL’s customers go solar. “We have more than 1,700 customers operating distributed generation now,” Bertot said. “We’re pleased this program has received customer interest.”

While things have been cruising along on the PV side of the equation, the solar hot water heater rebates haven’t been received as warmly. The residential solar water heater rebate is still open from the last round of funding, Bertot said. Under that incentive, homeowners can qualify for a $1,000 rebate to have a Florida solar installer install a solar hot water heater that can reduce a home’s water heating bill by up to 85 percent.