Investor-owned electric companies are ready for hurricane season
America’s investor-owned utilities (IOUs) continue to prepare for what the federal government predicts will be another above-normal Atlantic hurricane season this year and a near-normal 2021 tropical cyclone period in the Central Pacific region.
“Last year’s storm season brought an unprecedented number of named storms, which impacted customers and communities across the nation,” said Scott Aaronson, vice president for security and preparedness at the Edison Electric Institute (EEI), which represents all of the nation’s IOUs. “Based on current forecasts, electric companies again are expecting and preparing for an above-average storm season.”
While federal forecasters predict a 60-percent chance of an above-normal 2021 Atlantic hurricane season, they do not anticipate the historic level of storm activity seen in 2020. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on May 20 predicted the 2021 Atlantic hurricane season — which extends from June 1 through Nov. 30 — will include 13 to 20 named storms, of which six to 10 could become hurricanes and three to five of them becoming category 3, 4, or 5 hurricanes with winds of 111 mph or higher.
“Now is the time for communities along the coastline, as well as inland to get prepared for the dangers that hurricanes can bring,” U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said recently.
IOUs are proactively taking steps to get ready now for any emergencies, including by fine tuning their mutual assistance strategies, which enable the utilities to work together in advance of major storms and following natural disasters that strike without notice, EEI says.
Such collaborative strategies allow the electric companies to work together to identify potential resource needs and to line up additional personnel, equipment and supplies that may be needed to support power restoration and they provide a safe entry and a rapid, organized response in the affected areas, according to EEI.
“Following natural disasters, crews from across the United States and Canada assemble to assist impacted communities, and their safety is paramount to EEI and to our member companies,” Aaronson said.
Additionally, IOUs continue to update and follow guidelines developed last year during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic by the Electricity Subsector Coordinating Council, which serves as the principal liaison between the federal government and the electric power industry on efforts to prepare for and respond to national-level disasters or threats to critical infrastructure.
Florida Power and Light Co. (FPL), a subsidiary of publicly traded Juno Beach, Fla.-based NextEra Energy Inc. that serves 5.6 million customers, prepares year-round for hurricane season and conducts an annual week-long drill involving more than 3,000 employees.
This year’s exercise, held May 3-7, tested employee response to a simulated two-landfall hurricane with Gulf Power, which serves northwest Florida and is now part of FPL. The drill was conducted while employing safety measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to FPL President and CEO Eric Silagy, who said the safety measures are incorporated throughout the company’s hurricane response planning.
“We know that in Florida it’s not a question of if a hurricane will impact us, but when and where,” Silagy said. “Regardless of the forecast, Floridians know that it only takes one storm to upend our communities. That’s why we continuously prepare, make improvements, leverage technology, and sharpen our team’s skills so we can most effectively serve our customers when they need us most. The pandemic and other challenges do not change our steadfast commitment to restore power safely and as quickly as possible.”
At the same time, each of the nation’s IOUs also has made substantive investments to bolster the reliability of the power they deliver.
Duke Energy, for instance — a Fortune 150 company headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., serving 7.9 million customers in North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky — has modernized its power delivery system.
“We’ve been making upgrades across our system to build a stronger and smarter power grid to serve our customers,” said Scott Batson, senior vice president and Duke Energy’s chief distribution officer. “Our crews are ready to respond when the next hurricane strikes.”
Some of Duke’s investments include the installation of more than 8.5 million smart meters that provide new technology to better serve customers, such as a technology called Ping-it, which allows the company to remotely check whether service has been restored following repairs. Ping-it sends a signal to each meter in a few seconds to confirm repairs were successful, saving time and freeing up crews to help other customers, Batson said.
“The improvements we have made, and will continue to make, will provide real benefits to customers and communities and help us restore power faster when they count on us most,” he added.
Likewise, PPL Electric Utilities, the Pennsylvania-based subsidiary of publicly traded PPL Corp. delivering electricity to more than 1.4 million homes and businesses across the state, has invested in state-of-the-art automated sensors and switches, an advanced software system that allows the utility to stop outages before they occur, and smart grid devices that reduce the size of the area affected by an outage by instantly rerouting power around trouble spots.
Together, such investments have enabled PPL to avoid more than one million customer outages since 2015, according to a June 1 company statement.
PPL also has made additional improvements, including new power lines and substations, more storm-resistant poles, and a better vegetation-management program that it says has led to a 30-percent decrease in customer outages since 2011.
In the Central Pacific region of the United States, NOAA said on May 19 that there is a 45-percent chance of near-normal tropical cyclone activity during this year’s hurricane season, with two to five tropical cyclones predicted for the Central Pacific hurricane region. A near-normal season has four or five tropical cyclones, according to NOAA.
“This year we will likely see less activity in the Central Pacific region compared to more active seasons,” said Matthew Rosencrans, NOAA’s lead seasonal hurricane forecaster at the Climate Prediction Center. “Less activity is predicted since ocean temperatures are likely to be near- to below-average in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean where hurricanes form, and because El Nino is not present to increase the activity.”
Hawaiian Electric Co. Inc., an IOU providing electricity for 95 percent of the state’s residents on the islands of Oahu, Maui, Molokai, Lanai and Hawaii, also has been working during the past year to boost resilience. In 2020 the company spent $18 million to reinforce poles, lines and other equipment and cleared trees and vegetation from around power lines and equipment to reduce and shorten storm-related outages.
