Florida Power & Light restores power to 99 percent of customers affected by Tropical Storm Eta

As of 9 a.m. Tuesday, crews from Florida Power & Light had restored power to 345,000 customers after destruction wrought by Tropical Storm Eta, meaning 99 percent of customers are back online.

“Our restoration workforce of 12,000 worked all night in between bands of severe weather to restore service and won’t stop working until every last customer is restored,” Eric Silagy, president and CEO of FPL, said. “We experienced the worst effects of the storm last night and early this morning. Eta has cleared the region and our crews are now working neighborhood to neighborhood to get the lights back on for our customers. We’re also seeing some areas that are severely flooded and it will take longer to restore those outages.”

Electric utilities have faced a challenging and historic hurricane season as mutual assistance crews have worked multiple natural disasters throughout the country.

Nearly 300,000 people had already had their power restored as of 3 p.m. Monday, thanks to a workforce of 12,000 from 21 states. All of this was in response to a major storm that extended 310 miles from its center, peppering the region with falling trees, flying debris and flooding. The company said in order to speed the power restoration process it has more than 80 drone teams to help survey damage and has set up more than 30 staging and logistics sites throughout its service territory.

According to Silagy, investments in technology have saved a good deal of time when it comes to restoring power to customers.

“Initial reports show that our smart grid technology has helped us avoid nearly 50,000 outages and helped crews restore power faster,” Silagy said. “This is the result of the improvements we’ve made to build a stronger and smarter grid to make it even better for our customers and provide them with reliable service they can count on in good weather and bad.”