Phil Ammann
As Puerto Rico struggles with Hurricane Maria recovery, a 10-person team of experts from Florida Power & Light – the nation’s third-largest electric utility – traveled to the territory last week to help with ongoing energy restoration efforts.
Maria hit Puerto Rico Sept. 20 as a Category 4 storm, leaving nearly all of island’s 3.5 million residents without power.
Nevertheless, instead of reaching out to outside utilities – as is normal in such cases – Puerto Rico’s electric utility entered into a controversial $300 million contract with Whitefish Energy, a tiny untested firm, which charged higher-than-normal rates. The Whitefish contract was later canceled.
Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) executive director Richard Ramos Rodriguez resigned in November after facing criticism over both the contract and slow pace of restoration.
Maria destroyed much of Puerto Rico’s electrical grid, which was already in bad shape.
FPL’s team arrived to join a seven-member Incident Management Teams (IMT) made up of professionals representing electric companies from across the U.S. The deployment resulted from a formal request for mutual aid by PREPA and urged by Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rosselló.
“We’re pleased that the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and PREPA have accepted this additional help to return normalcy to our fellow American citizens of Puerto Rico who have been without electricity for so long,” said FPL President and CEO Eric Silagy. “We recognize just how difficult it is to be without power after a major hurricane. That’s why even before we had completed restoring power to our more than 4.4 million affected customers in the wake of Hurricane Irma, we quickly identified a team of restoration professionals who were prepared to deploy to Puerto Rico to offer whatever help we could provide.”
Teams were assigned to seven major regions across Puerto Rico, coordinating with PREPA, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as well as electric company contractors already on the island restoring power.
According to FPL, NextEra Energy, the utility’s parent company, donated $100,000 and matched the same amount as employee donations in the first few days after Hurricane Maria. Employees also held fundraisers and supply drives to help those impacted across the island.
As part of its efforts, FPL coordinated delivery of thousands of power poles and other equipment to Puerto Rico and accompanied Florida Gov. Rick Scott in a visit to the Commonwealth in November. Since then, FPL officials have stayed in Puerto Rico, to provide technical expertise and guidance in restoration efforts.
Scott had made support of Puerto Rico’s citizens a top priority in the wake of Hurricane Maria, communicating regularly with Rosselló, traveling to the island to offer the assistance, and regularly meeting with and being briefed by FPL.
Mutual assistance is common throughout the energy industry for the restoration of power following severe weather events, such as hurricanes, ice storms, and tornadoes. In September, crews from 30 states and Canada came to Florida to support the unprecedented restoration of more than 4.4 million FPL customers following Hurricane Irma.
Those workers, as well as FPL’s investment of more than $3 billion over the past decade for a stronger and smarter energy grid, helped shorten restoration times by several days.
