Duke Energy Florida's smart-thinking grid improves response, power restoration for customers during Hurricane Ian

subscribe

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -

As Hurricane Ian made its way across Florida, Duke Energy's grid improvements were already on the job helping to combat power outages from the storm.

Smart, self-healing technology helped to automatically restore more than 160,000 customer outages and saved nearly 3.3 million hours (nearly 200 million minutes) of total lost outage time.

"Hurricane Ian is a strong reminder of the importance of grid hardening and storm preparedness to help keep the lights on for our customers," said Melissa Seixas, Duke Energy Florida state president. "Self-healing technology is just one of many grid improvements that Duke Energy is making to avoid outages, restore service faster and increase reliability for our customers."

Much like the GPS in your car can identify an accident ahead and reroute you around the incident to keep you on your way, self-healing technology is like a GPS for the grid. The technology can quickly identify power outages and alternate energy pathways to restore service faster for customers when an outage occurs.

Additionally, self-healing technology provides a smart tool to assist crews in the field with power restoration after a major storm like Ian, helping reduce outage impacts and freeing up resources to help restore power in other locations.

Three days after Hurricane Ian exited the state, Duke Energy Florida wrapped up restoration of approximately 1 million customers. This progress enabled the company to deploy more than 550 Duke Energy workers from throughout Florida, as well as contractors from across the country, to help restore power for Lee County Electric Cooperative customers.

Crews worked in Cape Coral and Pine Island, one of the hardest-hit areas in the storm's path and completed power restoration for the majority of customers on Pine Island within approximately one week after arriving to the island.

Prior to Ian in 2022, smart, self-healing technology had helped avoid nearly 250,000 extended customer outages in Florida, saving around 285,000 hours (17.1 million minutes) of total lost outage time.

Duke Energy currently serves around 59% of customers in Florida with self-healing capabilities on its main power distribution lines, with a goal of serving around 80% over the next few years.

Related News

iran electricity

Iran eyes transmitting electricity to Europe as region’s power hub

TEHRAN - Following a plan for becoming West Asia’s electricity hub, Iran has been taking serious steps for joining its electricity network with neighbors in the past few years.

The Iranian Energy Ministry has been negotiating with the neighboring countries including Iraq, Russia, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, and Qatar for the connection of their power networks with Iran to make them enable to import or transmit their electricity to new destination markets through Iran.

The synchronization of power grids with the neighboring countries, not only enhances Iran’s electricity exchanges with them, but it will also increase the political stance of the country in the…

READ MORE
iran nuclear plant deal

Iran Says Deals to Rehabilitate, Develop Iraq Power Grid Finalized

READ MORE

bitcoin energy use

How Bitcoin's vast energy use could burst its bubble

READ MORE

sheerness power plant

Stop the Shock campaign seeks to bring back Canadian coal power

READ MORE

Emissions rise 2% in Australia

Emissions rise 2% in Australia amid increased pollution from electricity and transport

READ MORE