Kirk Crews
Executive Vice President, Finance and Chief Financial Officer at NextEra Energy
Thank you, John. For the first quarter of 2024, FPL's earnings per share increased $0.04 year-over-year. The principal driver of this performance was FPL's regulatory capital employed growth of approximately 11.5% year-over-year. We now expect FPL to realize roughly 10% average annual growth in regulatory capital employed over our current rate agreement's four-year term, which runs through 2025.
FPL's capital expenditures were approximately $2.3 billion for the quarter, and we expect FPL's full-year 2024 capital investments to be between $7.8 billion and $8.8 billion. For the 12 months ending March 2024, FPL's reported ROE for regulatory purposes will be approximately 11.8%. During the first quarter, we utilized approximately $572 million of reserve amortization, leaving FPL with a balance of roughly $651 million. As we've previously discussed, FPL historically utilizes more reserve amortization in the first half of the year, and we expect this trend to continue this year. Earlier this month, FPL received approval to reduce customer bills due to projected 2024 fuel savings. As a result, FPL's typical 1,000 kilowatt-hour residential customer bill is expected to be roughly $14 lower in May than the start of the year and approximately 37% lower than the current national average. Over the current four-year settlement agreement, we now expect FPL's capital investments to be slightly above our previous range of $32 billion to $34 billion.
This quarter, FPL placed into service 1,640 megawatts of new cost-effective solar, putting FPL's owned and operated solar portfolio at over 6,400 megawatts, which is the largest utility-owned solar portfolio in the country. FPL's annual 10-year site plan continues to indicate that solar and storage are the most cost-effective answer for customers to add reliable grid capacity over the next decade. The 2024 plan includes similar levels of new solar generation capacity, 21 gigawatts, across our service territory over the next 10 years compared to our 2023 plan. But our 2024 plan doubles the expected deployment of battery storage to over 4 gigawatts, some of which we expect to be needed earlier than forecasted in our 2023 plan. With this plan, we expect to increase FPL's solar mix from approximately 6% of our total generation in 2023 to 38% in 2033, while continuing to provide customers with clean, affordable energy.
FPL believes battery storage will play an increasingly valuable role for customers, serving as an attractive capacity complement to our growing solar generation. From providing system balancing needs in critical parts of FPL service territory to supplying energy during any time of day or weather condition, battery storage acts as a key resource to the system that's both valuable and cost-effective for customers.
Key indicators show that Florida's economy remains healthy. Florida continues to be one of the fastest-growing states in the nation and had four of the five fastest-growing US metro areas between 2022 and 2023. FPL had its strongest quarter of customer growth in over 15 years, with the average number of customers increasing by more than 100,000 from the comparable prior-year period. Although FPL's first quarter retail sales decreased by approximately 1.3% year-over-year, we estimate that weather had a negative impact on usage per customer of approximately 5.4% on a year-over-year basis. After taking weather into account, first quarter retail sales increased roughly 4.1% on a weather-normalized basis from the comparable prior-year period, driven primarily by continued favorable underlying population growth and usage per customer.
Now, let's turn to Energy Resources, which reported adjusted earnings growth of approximately 13.1% year-over-year. Contributions from new investments increased $0.15 per share year-over-year, primarily reflecting continued growth in our renewables portfolio. Our existing clean energy portfolio declined $0.02 per share, primarily due to unfavorable wind resource during the quarter. The comparative contribution from our customer supply business increased results by $0.04 per share. All other impacts reduced earnings by $0.12 per share. This decline reflects higher interest cost of $0.07 per share, half of which related to new borrowing costs to support new investments.
Energy Resources had a strong quarter of new renewables and storage originations, adding approximately 2,765 megawatts to the backlog. With these additions, our backlog now totals roughly 21.5 gigawatts after taking into account 1,165 megawatts of new projects placed into service since our last earnings call, highlighting Energy Resources' ability to continue to identify attractive and accretive investment opportunities, which provide strong growth visibility in the years ahead. We recently placed 740 megawatts of new solar and storage projects into service, which are being used to support data centers located in Arizona and New Mexico. Both of these projects are now one of the largest battery storage facilities in their respective states and, in combination with their co-located solar, each project enabled the local utility to serve their customers' needs for new, reliable, clean energy to grow their own business operations.
We are proud to continue to support our power and commercial and industrial customers to meet their growing power and capacity needs, create jobs and provide economic development in these local communities. Our origination activities across our power and commercial and industrial customers are beginning to reflect the rising power demand. We are seeing it manifest with our power customers in their state RFP processes and bilateral discussions, where we deliver cost-effective renewables and storage to their grid. We are also observing it through interactions with our oil and gas and manufacturing customers, where we utilize our data and technology to help them make better siting decisions. Our technology customers have been a consistent driver of demand for many years, reflected by our roughly 3-gigawatt operating portfolio and over 3-gigawatt project backlog as we partner with them to provide various clean energy solutions based on their key business variables. We are a partner with both our power and commercial industrial customers' trust. We leverage our 3-gigawatt development pipeline, our 35-gigawatt operating renewables and storage portfolio, and our transformer and switchgear procurement covering energy resources build [Phonetic] through 2027 to deliver projects for customers.
As John said, the power demand growth is expected to be strong through at least the end of the decade. We expect 2024 to be another strong year for new renewables and storage originations. This is on the heels of two consecutive record origination years at Energy Resources. We continue to expect to remain on track for our overall renewable development expectations of roughly 33 gigawatts to 42 gigawatts from 2023 through 2026.
Beyond renewables and storage, NextEra Energy Transmission was recently selected by the California ISO to develop a new 2-mile 500-kv transmission line in Southern California, with a capital investment of more than $250 million. We believe this project could unlock over 3 gigawatts of new renewable generation capacity, supporting California's ambitious clean energy goals. This award follows a record year for NextEra Energy Transmission in 2023, and we remain excited about the opportunities ahead for this growing business. We continue to believe our ability to build, own and operate transmission is a key advantage for our renewables business.
Turning now to our first quarter 2024 consolidated results, adjusted earnings from corporate and other decreased by $0.01 per share year-over-year. This quarter, we entered into an agreement to transfer approximately $1 billion of tax credits throughout 2024, representing the bulk of our expected transfers for the year.
Our long-term financial expectations remain unchanged. We will be disappointed if we're not able to deliver financial results at or near the top end of our adjusted EPS expectation ranges in 2024, 2025 and 2026. From 2021 to 2026, we continue to expect that our average annual growth in operating cash flow will be at or above our adjusted EPS compound annual growth rate range. And as we announced in February, the Board of Directors of NextEra Energy approved a targeted growth rate in dividends per share of roughly 10% per year through at least 2026 off a 2024 base. As always, our expectations assume [Phonetic] our caveats.
Turning to NextEra Energy Partners, we continue to focus on executing against the partnership's transition plan and delivering an LP distribution growth target of 6% through at least 2026. We bought out the STX Midstream convertible equity portfolio financing in 2023 and have sufficient proceeds available from the Texas pipeline portfolio sale to complete the NEP Renewables II buyouts due in June 2024 and 2025. The third convertible equity portfolio financing associated with the Meade natural gas pipeline assets is expected to be addressed in 2025. With a plan for the near-term convertible equity portfolio financings well understood, we remain focused on the partnership's cost of capital improving, which is critical for its success. With that objective in mind, we continue to evaluate alternatives to address the remaining convertible equity portfolio financing with equity buyout obligations in 2027 and beyond.
Turning to the partnership's targeted 6% growth in LP distributions per unit, NextEra Energy Partners does not expect to need an acquisition this year to achieve its 6% targeted growth rate, and the partnership does not expect to require growth equity until 2027. In terms of NextEra Energy Partners' growth plan, as a reminder, it involves organic growth, specifically repowerings of approximately 1.3 gigawatts of wind projects through 2026, as well as acquiring assets at attractive yields. Today, we are announcing plans to repower an additional approximately 100 megawatts of wind facilities through 2026. The partnership has now announced roughly 1,085 megawatts of repowers.
Yesterday, NextEra Energy Partners Board declared a quarterly distribution of $0.8925 per common unit, or $3.57 per common unit on an annualized basis, which reflects an annualized increase of 6% from its fourth quarter 2023 distribution per common unit.
Let me now turn to the detailed results. First quarter adjusted EBITDA was $462 million and cash available for distribution was $164 million. New projects, which primarily reflect contributions from approximately 840 net megawatts of new projects that either closed in the second quarter of 2023 or achieved commercial operations in 2023, contributed approximately $32 million of adjusted EBITDA and $7 million of cash available for distribution. First quarter adjusted EBITDA contribution from existing projects declined by approximately $37 million year-over-year, driven primarily by unfavorable wind resource during the quarter and lower generation at Genesis solar project as a result of a planned outage for major maintenance. Wind resource was approximately 97% of long-term average versus 102% in the first quarter of 2023. The incentive distribution rights fee suspension provided approximately $39 million of benefit this quarter for adjusted EBITDA and cash available for distribution. Finally, adjusted EBITDA and cash available for distribution declined by approximately $44 million and $38 million, respectively, for the divestiture of the Texas pipeline portfolio.
From a base of our fourth quarter 2023 distribution for common units and an annualized rate of $3.52, we continue to see 5% to 8% growth per year in LP distributions per unit, with a current target of 6% growth per year as being a reasonable range of expectation through at least 2026. We continue to expect the partnership's payout ratio to be in the mid-90s through 2026. We expect the annualized rate of the fourth quarter 2024 distribution that is payable in February 2025 to be $3.73 per common unit.
NextEra Energy Partners expects run rate contributions for adjusted EBITDA and cash available for distribution from its forecasted portfolio at December 31, 2024 to be in the ranges of $1.9 billion to $2.1 billion and $730 million to $820 million, respectively. As a reminder, year-end 2024 run rate projections reflect calendar-year 2025 contribution from the forecasted portfolio at year-end 2024. As a reminder, our expectations are subject to our caveats.
That concludes our prepared remarks, and with that, we will open the line for questions.
