Ryan Nicol
The Florida Power & Light Company (FPL) has restored power to more than 589,000 customers who lost service due to Hurricane Helene.
The company said 85% of accounts were restored within 12 hours of work following the storm, per a Friday news release. FPL’s latest publicly released numbers show 100,000 of its customers were without power. But that’s likely to change soon, per a roadmap the company released for restoring power to those who still need it.
The company aims for 95% restoration for customers in Brevard, Flagler, Glades, Hardee, Lee and Volusia counties by Saturday evening. FPL hopes to hit 95% restoration for Charlotte, Manatee and Sarasota customers by Sunday evening. Those latter counties didn’t get a direct hit from Helene, but were severely impacted by the storm’s severe surge.
Customers in more northern parts of the state, closer to where Helene made landfall, should see significant progress by Monday evening. FPL hopes to hit the 95% service mark by then in Alachua, Baker, Bradford, Clay, Columbia, Duval, Nassau, Putnam, St. Johns, Suwannee and Union counties, except in places still heavily flooded or where workers can otherwise not safely restore service.
Customers in Broward, Collier, DeSoto, Hendry, Highlands, Indian River, Martin, Miami-Dade, Okeechobee, Palm Beach, Seminole and St. Lucie counties have already mostly had their power restored, per FPL.
“We have restored power to 85% of our customers impacted by Helene, but our work is not done,” said FPL President and CEO Armando Pimentel. “We are committed to getting the lights back on. Our crews will work around the clock because our job is not done until every customer has power.”
FPL has made substantial progress following a storm where more than a million Floridians across the state were without power at some point, with more than 500,000 still waiting for service as of Saturday morning from various power providers.
The company also added that more than 140,000 outages were avoided thanks to FPL’s smart grid technology, which helps real-time monitoring of potential issues allowing for preemptive efforts to prevent outages and quicker responses when outages do occur.
FPL’s work began before the storm hit, with activating restoration teams waiting to act once it became safe. The company has also released safety reminders as its workers continue efforts to restore power.
