Florida Power & Light preparing for hurricane season, showcasing efforts to increase safety

PANAMA CITY, Fla. (WJHG/WECP) - Florida Power & Light Company showcased tools used to restore power following severe weather, in part to show their preparation for the 2024 hurricane season.

Our area is no stranger to severe weather so Florida Power & Light ensures everyone is prepared when a storm comes through. Whether it’s making sure their lineman are staying safe when restoring power or getting power restored for customers.

“A cat 5 will be very challenging as we’ve seen that with hurricane Michael and we’ve seen that in other areas,” said JT Young Northwest Florida Power and Light, Vice President, and General Manager. “I will tell you it is important for our customers to know that again every day we don’t have a storm we are getting ready for the storm.”

Florida Power and Light in Panama City showcased to the community how they are ready for the hurricane season.

“This demonstration was a transformer change out which happens quite often,” said Young. “Often times not even during a storm but certainly during a storm so their folks were here today that were actually able to see our crews do, how they set up how they practice safety measures.”

Safety measures linemen use like wearing hard hats and gloves to the orange cover-ups they put on the lines.

FPL officials say they have done lots of work since Hurricane Michael in an effort of resiliency.

“Since 2019 FPL has actually inspected over 57,000 poles in this area put in over 2,300 smart technology smart grid technology devices across our system and we’ve hardened over 74 main lines,” said Young.

They say hardening the poles gives them a more resilient infrastructure by withstanding stronger winds. They have added smart grids to power lines so they can diagnose outages as quickly as possible. They have been undergrounding power lines in Bay County since 2019.

“It targets neighborhoods that have a history of outages during severe weather events and vegetation-related outages,” said Shawn Johnson, Florida Power and Light spokesperson.

Vegetation growing on power lines is the leading cause of outages.

“This year here in the Bay County area were going to be undergrounding more than 30 miles of overhead power lines taking those lines and replacing them with underground lines,” said Johnson.

FPL says the Storm Secure program has proven value for their customers

“In the recent storm season or even just your typical afternoon thunderstorm right so it’s been a very beneficial program and it’s a program were continuing to extend in the years ahead as well, said Johnson.

Florida Power and Light has also added a storm bunker to their Panama City office which allows responders to ride out the storm and coordinate to get the power back on.