Power is moving underground in neighborhoods across Martin County as Florida Power & Light works to strengthen the grid for storm season.<\/p>\n
The Storm Secure Underground program shifts overhead power lines below ground, a move FPL said can reduce outages caused by hurricanes, falling trees and severe weather. Crews are currently working in several communities, including Palm City.<\/p>\n
WATCH BELOW: \u2018It\u2019s great. I applaud them for it,\u2019 resident Craig Bowsman tells WPTV\u2019s Cassandra Garcia<\/p>\n
FPL said data helps determine where undergrounding is most needed, particularly in areas that have experienced repeated storm-related outages.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome of that data that we look at are outages related to hurricanes and outages related to trees,\u201d said Kamrel Eppinger, an FPL spokesperson.<\/p>\n
For residents like Craig Bowsman, those outages are memorable.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrancis and Jean from the corner down, we had 11 pine trees across the road,\u201d Bowsman said. \u201cWe were out for 23 days.\u201d<\/p>\n
The undergrounding process involves drilling beneath neighborhoods to create a path for power lines. While undergrounding can be more challenging in flood-prone areas, FPL said it\u2019s the future for many of our communities.<\/p>\n
\u201cDuring the 2024 hurricane season, we\u2019ve seen that these lines perform up to 14 times better than their overhead counterparts,\u201d Eppinger said. \u201dDay to day, they perform up to 50% better.\u201d <\/p>\n
So far, FPL reports 25 projects in Martin County have impacted about 700 customers. By next hurricane season, another 302 customers are expected to receive underground service.<\/p>\n
Bowsman said the changes bring peace of mind.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s so many things that mother nature can do to us. I\u2019ve lost three transformers here to lightning that probably wouldn\u2019t have happened if it all would have been underground,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s great. I applaud them for it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Similar projects are underway in neighboring counties. FPL said more than 6,000 customers have been shifted underground in both St. Lucie and Indian River counties, while Palm Beach County has surpassed 22,000 customers.<\/p>\n
Portions of this story were assisted by artificial intelligence tools and reviewed by a WFLX journalists to ensure accuracy, clarity, and adherence to editorial standards.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Power is moving underground in neighborhoods across Martin County as Florida Power & Light works to strengthen the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":129728,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[171,173,172],"class_list":["post-129727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-port-st-lucie","tag-port-st-lucie","tag-port-st-lucie-headlines","tag-port-st-lucie-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129727\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}