We understand how much you depend on your electric service. When you flip the switch, you expect the lights to come on.
That’s why we’re committed to building a stronger, smarter grid to deliver electricity you can count on in good weather and bad. FPL has improved service reliability by about 40% since 2006. But we’re never satisfied. We work year-round to improve your service even more.
Extensive improvements every year
Since 2006, we’ve made significant investments to strengthen our electric system and make it more resilient to severe weather. We also continue to deploy innovative, industry-leading solutions to improve the grid – investments that are paying off every day for our customers with better service reliability. And, when outages occur, these improvements help us restore your power faster. Here are some of the ways we strengthen the system:
- Inspecting power poles. We continuously inspect 1.4 million power poles and replace those that don’t meet our standards for strength.
- Maintain vegetation from power lines. Tree limbs and palm fronds growing near power lines are a common cause of power flickers and outages. We proactively maintain about 17,500 miles of power lines each year, trimming vegetation where necessary to help prevent outages.
- Strengthening main power lines. We are strengthening or undergrounding our main power lines that may serve critical community services, such as hospitals, police and fire stations, and emergency communication systems.
- Undergrounding neighborhood power lines. Through FPL’s Storm Secure Underground Program, we’re converting overhead neighborhood power lines to more reliable underground lines leveraging data such historical outages during hurricanes and severe weather, as well as vegetation-related outages.
- Inspecting power lines. Infrared cameras can find otherwise undetectable issues with power lines and equipment. This infrared camera technology helps us locate many potential problems and address them before they cause an outage.
Crews replace older power poles with new concrete structures in Hialeah.
FPL lineworkers install an Automated Feeder Switch -- one of several smart grid technologies we leverage.
Crew place neighborhood power lines underground in Port Charlotte.
Cutting-edge technology
We’re investing in advanced smart grid technology and exploring emerging technologies, including small unmanned aircraft systems that help make the grid stronger and smarter, and improve service for our customers.
Smart grid upgrades help prevent power issues and, if your lights go out, help us get them back on faster. Smart grid technology, including smart meters and automated switches, improve reliability by:
- Helping identify and diagnose equipment issues early so we can service them proactively, preventing many outages before they occur.
- Automatically rerouting electricity around trouble spots, confining outages to smaller areas.
- Pinpointing the location of outages quickly – often before customers call to report them – so we can restore power faster.
FPL regularly conducts proactive drone assessments of equipment to ensure that we can provide reliable service for our customers in good weather and bad.