Resiliency is the ability to recover quickly from a disruption, and Duke Energy Florida has been preparing ahead of the start of hurricane season to respond quickly and restore power faster when the next storm strikes.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts an above-normal hurricane season with 17 to 25 named storms this season, including 8 to 13 hurricanes, and four to seven of those becoming major hurricanes. This year’s forecast predicts around 30% more storm activity compared to the number of storms predicted last year.
The company has a comprehensive and flexible storm response plan, built upon decades of experience and improvement. Advanced forecasting and damage modeling processes help the company to place crews, support resources and equipment strategically ahead of a storm to respond quickly as outages occur.
Duke Energy Florida maintains an electric army of nearly 4,000 employees and contractors ready to respond to outages when storms strike. And alliances with peer utilities provide additional resources to shorten response times and get communities back on their feet faster.
Building a Stronger, More Resilient Power Grid
Thanks to its Storm Protection Plan and the company’s year-round infrastructure work, Duke Energy Florida is making improvements and upgrades to its systems and lines to support the rapid growth of our Florida communities, enhance its storm response and provide better information when outages do occur.
Some of these improvements include upgrading thousands of poles and wires to increase reliability and better withstand storms, strategically placing outage-prone lines underground in some areas, managing trees and vegetation, and installing smart, self-healing technology that can automatically detect power outages and quickly restore power when an outage occurs.
- During hurricanes Ian, Nicole and Idalia, self-heling technology helped save more than 200 million outage minutes for Duke Energy Florida customers. More than 70% of Duke Energy Florida customers benefit from self-healing and automated restoration technologies.
- The company plans to install hundreds of miles of underground cable in areas that are identified as the most outage-prone lines. About 48% of Duke Energy Florida’s primary power lines are underground and better protected from wind damage.
- Teams have completed more than 4,000 miles of maintenance trimming on Duke Energy Florida’s distribution lines and 600 miles of planned work on the transmission side.
- Over the past three year, more than 40,000 poles have been hardened through the Storm Protection Plan.
- Additionally, the company is expanding capacity of the electric grid by building new substations, expanding existing substations and installing new or larger circuits to provide reliable service in the growing state. Duke Energy has completed optimization of eight substations, with another 38 in flight in Florida.
These investments are already benefitting Florida customers. In 2023, the company had its best reliability performance in more than a decade. Between 2018 and 2023, the company reduced the average length of a customer outage by 27%.
To check out the tips Duke Energy shared to help customers prepare for storms, visit the website.
