Staff Reports
Florida Power & Light Company (FPL) has already restored power to hundreds of thousands of customers as Hurricane Irma continues to move through the state and the company expects additional, lengthy outages as Irma remains a threat to millions of customers throughout Florida.
“Despite Irma’s exceedingly high winds, tornadic activity, storm surge and severe flooding, FPL has restored power to hundreds of thousands of customers, due largely to automation along its energy grid,” said Eric Silagy, president and CEO of FPL. “Due to the fact that Irma has slowed considerably, we’re seeing significant damage and severe flooding in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, with Irma’s impacts now being felt in Palm Beach County and northern coastal communities. We expect the west coast to be the hardest-hit area, requiring an extensive rebuild of our energy grid. As a result, our west coast customers will likely be without power for a much longer period of time. We urge everyone to continue to stay safe and ask for your patience.”
Hurricane Irma continues to impact Florida as a powerful Category 3 storm. FPL anticipates that customers will likely experience more than one outage throughout the duration of the storm, particularly as Irma’s speed has slowed. As of this afternoon, we have restored more than 350,000 outages in the midst of Hurricane Irma, primarily as a result of the $3 billion invested over the past decade to make our electric system stronger and smarter.
FPL’s restoration workforce is restoring power in between bands of severe weather where conditions permit and it’s safe to do so. We are poised to begin thorough damage assessments as soon as it is safe to work, and will provide broad estimates of when power will be restored as soon as available.
“We understand how challenging it is to be without power. Just like our customers, we too live here and take this personally, and all of us at FPL are dedicated to getting the lights back on safely and as quickly as possible,” added Silagy. “We assembled the largest pre-storm restoration workforce in our nation’s history, but this will likely be a recovery effort of historic proportions, extending for weeks. You have my personal commitment that we will continue to work around the clock until every customer’s electricity is back on.”
