FPL shares lessons learned after Hurricane Irma knocked out power statewide

FPL learning to restore power faster

As Hurricane Irma roared through, Florida Power and Light officials watched in real time as 4.4 million of its 4.9 million customers in all 35 of the counties it serves lose electricity.

Tuesday afternoon, FPL gave News 6 an exclusive look at its brand new Category 5 hurricane-proof operations center in Palm Coast. 

FPL Vice President of Power Delivery Manny Miranda said investing in software technology and hardening its grid allowed FPL to restore more customers, faster.

"I think we did very well," Miranda said. "With all storms, hurricanes are a powerful force of nature. When Hurricane Irma impacted us, it impacted all 35 counties that we serve here at FPL. It affected over 4.4 million of our customers. When you kind of step back and look at our restoration performance, it was one of our best even after the 4.4 million customers out of service. Within 25 hours, we had restored over 50 percent of our customers."

Miranda said within three days, 75 percent of FPL customers were restored and within five days, 90 percent of customers were back on.

"Like every storm, we will look at how we responded to the storm, but we are very critical of ourselves and will look at our performance," Miranda said. "If you look back at this performance and how fast we got lights on, Hurricane Wilma took us 18 days. We improved that down to 10 days for everyone." 

Over the past decade, FPL spent $3 billion on upgrades to its infrastructure.

Engineers at operations centers across the state can now use software to zoom into maps and pinpoint outages in real time without having to send a truck to a neighborhood. Every single FPL customer is connected to the "Smart Grid."

"Hardening" includes building and reinforcing infrastructure to withstand the storm, like replacing wooden power poles with concrete ones and building hurricane-proof buildings to house workers so they can monitor the storm and respond as soon as it passes.

FPL also installed smart circuit breakers that self-heal when a branch hits a line and causes a short. Miranda said the self-healing breakers kept 5,000 customers on during and after the storm.

 News 6 asked why the vast majority of customers lost power even though the company spent $3 billion on upgrades.

"Well the electrical facilities, when trees fall over into the lines, the lines short out," Miranda said. "So if something comes into contact, it will temporarily lock out. But the investments we made with the Smart Grid enabled us to understand where we had outages. It enables us to reroute power very quickly."

Miranda admitted FPL has learned lessons from Irma and must do better.

One lesson is teaching people about tree type and placement.

"A lot of damage we had is the trees topped over," Miranda said. "So the 'Right Tree, Right Place' program looks at what type of trees we plant, making sure they're nature trees, making sure if the tree topples over it won't be into a line."    

Miranda said FPL is now working with consultants and technology companies to better predict when power will come back on.

"That's an area we're going to be taking a hard look at, how can we provide a more granular level of information for our customers," Miranda said. 

Duke Energy was heavily criticized for underestimating restoration time frames and missing self-imposed deadlines.

News 6 asked if FPL learned any lessons from the situation with Duke Energy after the storm.

"It's too early, we're all evaluating our performance, this is a humbling business, we've got lots of lessons learned on our own part we can apply," Miranda said.

Miranda wouldn't say how much the Irma restoration effort cost and how much it will cost customers. He said FPL is still adding up the bill but it will be significant.

FPL customers are still paying a $3.36 monthly surcharge for restoration after Hurricane Matthew in 2016.


About the Author:

Erik von Ancken anchors and reports for News 6 and is a two-time Emmy award-winning journalist in the prestigious and coveted "On-Camera Talent" categories for both anchoring and reporting.

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