Florida Power & Light Company highlights quick restoration times, stronger grid as 2023 hurricane season ends
The 2023 hurricane season has officially ended, and despite heavy storm seasons becoming more frequent, this was not the worst for Florida Power & Light Company (FPL) customers, something the company credited in part to its grid-strengthening investments.
“This year, we once again saw the value of investing in and preparing the energy grid for Mother Nature,” Armando Pimentel, FPL president and CEO, said. “While the 2023 hurricane season is coming to an end, we want our customers to know that we are continuing to make strategic system improvements for a stronger, more resilient energy grid that our customers can count on in good weather and bad.”
Over the year, FPL utilized its Storm Secure Underground Program to replace overhead neighborhood power lines with more resilient underground lines, installed intelligent devices, hardened main overhead lines and continued vegetation management near power lines. According to FPL, the underground lines performed approximately 12 times better than overhead lines during Hurricane Idalia, and intelligent devices helped avoid more than 70,000 outages.
Idalia was perhaps the greatest test of the new system updates this season. It hit in August, slamming Florida’s Big Bend region and assailing around 200,000 FPL customers. Despite destructive winds, torrential rain and storm surge, most of its customers were restored within two days of the storm’s exit from Florida.
