Florida Power & Light Company unveils new smart grid technology

Florida Power & Light Company (FPL) unveiled Tuesday a new piece of smart grid technology, called the Automated Transformer Switch (ATS), also called a VacuFuse Self-Resetting Interrupter, which helps to prevent and reduce power outages.

“The investments we’ve made throughout the last 13 years to build a stronger, smarter energy grid continue to provide tangible benefits to our customers in the form of higher day-to-day reliability and faster restoration following a major storm,” Eric Silagy, president and CEO of FPL, said.

The ATS was jointly developed by FPL and S&C Electric Company.

“Over the last few years, we have worked with FPL to identify ways to use our technology to better serve its customers,” Mike Edmonds, chief commercial officer for S&C, said. “The new device brings advanced technology to areas of the grid that have never had it before and adds more tools to help FPL continue to improve its service reliability.”

FPL also recently completed the installation of 80,000 smart switches on its energy grid to reduce outages. Since the 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons, FPL has invested approximately $3 billion in making the grid stronger, smarter and more storm resilient, the company noted. Service reliability for the FPL customers has increased by more than 30 percent in the last 10 years.
“The smart grid technology we’ve deployed pays dividends for our customers every day,” Manny Miranda, senior vice president of power delivery for FPL, said. “The automated smart switches alone have allowed the company to avoid more than 1.3 million interruptions just in 2018. I look forward to continuing to use technology such as the ATS to deliver service that our customers can count on in good weather and bad.”