Florida Power & Light Company again offered the most reliable electric service of the state's major utilities in 2022, with customers seeing a 41% improvement since 2006.
In annual reports filed Wednesday with the Florida Public Service Commission, FPL was best in the state in key industry metrics such as the average amount of time a customer experienced an outage; the average number of interruptions; and the average number of momentary interruptions or flickers.
Florida's investor-owned utilities, which collectively serve more than 75% of the state's population, file reliability reports with the PSC every March. FPL has been the state's leader in reliability in 16 of the past 17 years. In 2021, Gulf Power led in reliability, although the utility already was part of FPL at the time.
"Our customers expect superior service, and we realize any minute they are out of power is a minute too much," said FPL President and CEO Armando Pimentel. "That's why at FPL we relentlessly work to improve the reliable service we provide. Our investments in smart grid technology and in hardening and undergrounding our system are paying off for customers, both in good weather and bad. Our response to the historic 2022 hurricane season proved that, and we will strive to build on this already industry-leading performance."
FPL's outstanding reliability is a result of the company's ongoing commitment to making its energy grid stronger, smarter and more storm resilient. Since the historic 2004-05 hurricane seasons, FPL has launched major investments in protecting the grid against extreme weather and improving day-to-day reliability. These include:
- Removing wooden transmission structures and replacing them with new ones made of steel or concrete.
- Hardening main power lines that serve critical community facilities and services.
- Inspecting power poles and replacing those that no longer meet FPL's industry-leading standards for strength.
- Installing more than 200,000 intelligent devices along the grid to detect and prevent power outages and minimize restoration times when outages occur.
- Inspecting and maintaining trees and other vegetation along more than 25,000 miles of power lines each year to reduce a leading cause of outages.
- Placing more neighborhood power lines underground through the Storm Secure Underground Program, which has completed more than 1,200 projects since it started in 2018. In 2022 alone, FPL completed more than 600 projects.
In 2022, for the seventh time in eight years, FPL was awarded the ReliabilityOne® National Reliability Award, presented by PA Consulting.
