FPL plans further hardening of grid
CEO of parent NextEra tells investors to expect $20 billion in upgrades.
NextEra Energy Inc. CEO and Chairman Jim Robo told an investor conference this week the company will spend close to $20 billion in capital investments in the next three years, including more hardening of the Florida Power & Light Co. grid.
Next year, Robo said, FPL plans to bring forward ideas to the Florida Public Service Commission about how to harden the “last mile” as power travels from generating plants to customers, and that could include more undergrounding of the system.
“I think politically there is going to be a new interest in hardening. I think we are going to be bringing forward some ideas in hardening the last mile to the commission when we file our storm hardening plans next year,” Robo said.
Robo said FPL restored customers’ power 60 percent faster after Hurricane Irma than it did after Hurricane Wilma in 2005, but it is looking at lessons learned from the storm.
“This was the largest hurricane event our company has ever faced. Over 89 percent of
our customers lost power at one point,” Robo said at the Wolfe Research Utilities & Power Leaders Conference held Monday and Tuesday in New York.
Next Era and its principal subsidiary, FPL, are headquartered in Juno Beach.
The nearly $3 billion FPL spent on hardening its grid since 2006 paid off, Robo said.
“If you had an outage in Wilma, you were out five days on average. In Irma, you were out for only two days,” Robo said.
Irma affected 4.45 million of FPL’s 4.9 million customer accounts — representing about 10 million people — in all the 35 counties it serves across 27,000 square miles. The storm had maximum sustained winds of 130 to 156 mph at Florida landfall and caused widespread flooding and significant vegetation debris. It made landfall in the Florida Keys at 9:10 a.m. on Sept. 10 as a Category 4 storm and again at 3:35 p.m. on Marco Island as a Category 4 storm.
From 2006 through the end of this year, FPL will have strengthened nearly 860 main power lines serving critical community facilities and services, placed more than 450 main power lines underground, cleared vegetation from more than 150,000 miles of power lines and regularly inspected its 1.2 million poles, upgrading or replacing them as needed.
To offer some perspective on the effectiveness of the $3 billion grid hardening effort, Robo contrasted hurricanes Wilma and Irma.
Prior to Irma, Wilma was the biggest storm FPL had ever faced, cutting power at some point to 3.2 million customers out of 4.3 million, or about 75 percent. Wilma affected FPL customers in 21 counties and its maximum sustained winds were 120 to 150 mph at Florida landfall.
“A big piece of the peninsula was missed by Wilma in 2005,” Robo said.
Irma was more than 50 percent stronger than Wilma, based on its damage potential, according to an index developed by the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Robo said.
Robo said the GDP in the 35 counties where FPL has customers amounts to over $1 billion a day.
“Three days of avoided economic loss more than paid for $3 billion of hardening we spent in the last 10 years since Wilma,” Robo said. “All the investments we made in hardening really paid off.”
FPL’s post-Irma restoration reached 50 percent of customers in one day, while after Wilma that point was reached in five days.
Irma toppled 2,500 power poles, compared with the 12,400 poles Wilma took out.
“We had no transmission system issues whatsoever, unlike in Wilma where we lost the transmission system in the south end of our system for several days,” Robo said.
“We have a long list of lessons learned,” Robo said. “We were certainly far from perfect in this restoration. I am convinced there is no other company in the country who could have restored after a hurricane this strong and this widespread across their service territory than us.”
Robo said he spent time in the field during the restoration that deployed 27,000 workers to tackle vegetation, lines and other concerns. During the unprecedented restoration, FPL served more than 721,000 meals to workers and provided over 300,000 “bed nights” of lodging.
Despite the storm, FPL remains focused on delivering capital improvements of $17.5 billion to $19 billion from this year through 2020. The investments will result in improved reliability and economics for customers, he said.
More than half of Florida’s current residents did not live in the state when Wilma hit.
Robo said hardening of main trunk lines known as feeders began in 2006, and is expected to be completed by 2024. Hardening efforts will continue for years.
“You can’t harden a system as large as ours over five years. That is not possible,” Robo said.