FORT MYERS, Fla. (WINK) \u2014 Nearly four years after Hurricane Ian left hundreds of thousands of Southwest Floridians without electricity, local power providers say they have spent years strengthening the electric grid to better withstand future storms.<\/p>\n
With hurricane season underway, both Florida Power & Light and Lee County Electric Cooperative say investments in infrastructure, technology and storm preparation are aimed at reducing outages and restoring power faster when severe weather strikes.<\/p>\n
For Cape Coral resident Kelly Palmer, the memories of Ian remain fresh.<\/p>\n
\u201cDuring Ian, we were probably without power for four weeks,\u201d Palmer said.<\/p>\n
She says living without electricity for nearly a month created challenges many Southwest Floridians know all too well.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a lot of grilling, keeping food cold in a cooler and getting ice,\u201d Palmer said. \u201cIt was kind of like camping inside my house.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since Ian, utilities have continued investing in upgrades designed to make the grid more resilient.<\/p>\n
FPL says one of the biggest changes involves smart-grid technology. The company says it now has more than 240,000 intelligent devices installed throughout its electric system. Those devices communicate with one another and can automatically reroute power when part of the grid is damaged.<\/p>\n
\u201cThink about it like a GPS in your car,\u201d said FPL spokesperson Jack Eble. \u201cIf there\u2019s a crash on the highway, you\u2019re rerouted from point A to point B. That\u2019s how some of our smart grid devices work along the grid.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to FPL, those devices helped customers avoid more than 800,000 service interruptions during the 2024 hurricane season, which included three hurricanes making landfall in Florida.<\/p>\n
The company also says all transmission structures serving Southwest Florida are now made of steel or concrete. FPL has also continued expanding underground power line projects through its Storm Secure Underground Program, which uses outage and storm data to determine where underground lines could provide the greatest benefit.<\/p>\n
LCEC says its approach to grid hardening focuses on three areas: physical infrastructure, technology and automation, and system design.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are in very good shape,\u201d said LCEC CEO Denise Vidal. \u201cIt\u2019s really three categories that we think about when we\u2019re hardening the infrastructure. First is the physical infrastructure, next is the technology and automation, and then it\u2019s how you design the infrastructure.\u201d<\/p>\n
The cooperative says it has replaced wooden transmission poles with concrete and steel structures, increased vegetation management efforts and expanded automation that can isolate outages and reroute electricity around damaged sections of the system.<\/p>\n
Vidal says one of the biggest lessons learned from Hurricane Ian involved improving restoration operations, communication and resource management during major disasters.<\/p>\n
Despite those improvements, utility leaders stress that no electric grid can completely withstand every storm.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know that no grid can be 100% storm-proof,\u201d Eble said.<\/p>\n
Palmer says hearing about the investments gives her some comfort as another hurricane season begins.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo hear that something\u2019s being done that can help, that\u2019s awesome to know,\u201d Palmer said. \u201cIt eases my anxiety some.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both utilities encourage residents to prepare now by reviewing emergency plans, stocking up on food, water and medications, and learning how to safely operate generators before a storm threatens Southwest Florida.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FORT MYERS, Fla. (WINK) \u2014 Nearly four years after Hurricane Ian left hundreds of thousands of Southwest Floridians…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":312541,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210,325,115,121785,130189],"class_list":["post-312540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news","tag-lee","tag-news","tag-southwest_florida","tag-wink_hurricane_preparedness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312540","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=312540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312540\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/312541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}