Florida Power & Light enhances energy grid with planned upgrades in Broward County

How we’re upgrading your neighborhood: FPL plans to make the following upgrades throughout 2024 in Broward County as part of its ongoing commitment to avoid outages and restore power faster following severe weather:

• Planning 219 Storm Secure Underground Program (SSUP) projects to replace overhead neighborhood power lines with more reliable underground lines.
• Strengthening 54 main power lines, including those that serve critical community services.
• Maintaining trees and vegetation – a common cause of power outages, particularly during hurricanes and extreme weather – along 2,925 miles of power lines.
• Inspecting 12,305 power poles in Broward County as part of an eight-year inspection cycle, strengthening or replacing those that no longer meet FPL’s industry-leading standards.
• Installing smart grid technology, including 109 intelligent devices on main and neighborhood power lines. These devices identify outages and reroute power around the trouble spots, preventing more widespread interruptions.

New this year: FPL continuously leverages new and innovative technologies to improve reliability for its customers and is implementing the following innovations this year:

• Piloting the installation of automated underground switches which will help detect and isolate outages, further enhancing reliability of underground lines.
• Using “smart trimming” technology to identify and trim a leading cause of power outages: trees and other vegetation contacting power lines. Smart trimming also helps the company identify areas of concern and assign the work electronically, saving inspection time.

Cumulative improvements in the Broward County area: When the planned 2024 work is completed, FPL will have made the following improvements since 2006:

• Completed 331 SSUP projects.
• Strengthened 469 main power lines, including those that serve critical services.
• Inspected and maintained vegetation near 19,565 miles of power lines – an average of 1,087 miles per year.
• Inspected 201,164 power poles for strength.
• Installed smart grid technology, including 10,380 automated switches on main and neighborhood power lines.

A word from Wallace Woodard, director overseeing Broward and Miami-Dade Counties at FPL: “We are so pleased to be able to offer these system upgrades to our customers in Broward County. Our dedicated team at FPL is committed to providing you with safe and reliable electric service. These upgrades, including the very latest grid technology, will help get the lights back on faster after storms.”

For perspective: An annual report filed March 1 with the Florida Public Service Commission details how FPL delivered the best service reliability in company history last year. In the most recent statistics from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, FPL’s service reliability was nearly three times better than the national average.