- Grid improvements producing record-breaking reliability
ST.
PETERSBURG, Fla., Sept. 10,
2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Duke Energy's year-round
grid-strengthening work and advanced technology help keep
Florida communities resilient and
better protected against disasters such as hurricanes.
"Regardless of when and where the next storm strikes," said
Melissa Seixas, Duke Energy Florida
state president, "Duke Energy is ready, and we encourage our
customers to take this time to reassess and communicate their
emergency response plans with their families, friends, neighbors
and employees."
According to the National Hurricane Center, the peak of the
Atlantic hurricane season is Sept.
10, with most activity occurring between mid-August and
mid-October.
Hurricane Debby, a powerful Category 1 storm, made an early
landfall in Florida's Big Bend on
Aug. 5. Duke Energy's Storm
Protection Plan, including its advanced self-healing technology and
year-round infrastructure work, is making a difference when it
comes to improving reliability.
During Hurricane Debby, the company's self-healing technology
saved more than 12.5 million minutes of customer total outage time
and automatically restored more than 62,000 customer outages.
While a self-healing system can't repair the physical damage to
the power line that a human crew must repair, it can reduce the
number of customers affected by a power outage by up to 75% and can
often restore power in less than a minute. More than 76% of Duke
Energy Florida customers are served by this technology.
These investments enabled Duke Energy Florida to quickly restore
power for 93% of its customers within 24 hours after Hurricane
Debby made landfall.
"Throughout the year and across the 35 counties we operate in,
Duke Energy teams are upgrading thousands of poles and wires,
managing trees and vegetation, strategically placing outage-prone
lines underground, enhancing substations and installing smart,
self-healing technology that can automatically detect power outages
and quickly restore power when an outage occurs," said Seixas.
- During hurricanes Ian, Nicole and Idalia, self-healing
technology helped save more than 200 million outage minutes for
Duke Energy Florida customers.
- Approximately 48% of Duke Energy Florida's primary power lines
are underground and better protected from wind damage. The company
will continue to install underground cable in areas that are
identified as the most outage-prone areas.
- Teams have completed more than 4,000 miles of maintenance
trimming on Duke Energy Florida's distribution lines and 600 miles
of planned work on the transmission side.
- Over the past three years, more than 40,000 poles have been
hardened through the Storm Protection Plan.
- Additionally, the company is expanding capacity of the electric
grid by building new substations, expanding existing substations
and installing new or larger circuits to provide reliable service
in the growing state. Duke Energy has completed optimization of 12
substations, with another 50 in flight in Florida.
"We understand this work can be invasive and disruptive during
blue sky days," Seixas continued. "We appreciate our customers'
patience as our teams work to protect and improve the service that
you, your homes, businesses, schools, public safety facilities and
hospitals rely on every single day."
In addition to making improvements and upgrades to its systems
to enhance its storm readiness as well as support the rapid growth
of our Florida communities, Duke
Energy also credits its rapid response to decades of lessons
learned and key collaborations with first responders as well as
federal, state and local emergency management agencies.
For more information on the company's storm response during
Hurricane Debby,
visit https://illumination.duke-energy.com/articles/grid-investments-enable-quick-response-to-hurricane-debby.
For tips on how to prepare for severe weather, please
visit duke-energy.com/StormTips.
Duke Energy Florida
Duke Energy Florida, a subsidiary of Duke Energy, owns 12,300
megawatts of energy capacity, supplying electricity to 2 million
residential, commercial and industrial customers across a
13,000-square-mile service area in Florida.
Duke Energy
Duke Energy (NYSE: DUK), a Fortune 150 company headquartered in
Charlotte, N.C., is one of
America's largest energy holding companies. The company's electric
utilities serve 8.4 million customers in North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Indiana, Ohio
and Kentucky, and collectively own
54,800 megawatts of energy capacity. Its natural gas utilities
serve 1.7 million customers in North
Carolina, South Carolina,
Tennessee, Ohio and Kentucky.
Duke Energy is executing an ambitious clean energy transition,
keeping reliability, affordability and accessibility at the
forefront as the company works toward net-zero methane emissions
from its natural gas business by 2030 and net-zero carbon emissions
from electricity generation by 2050. The company is investing in
major electric grid upgrades and cleaner generation, including
expanded energy storage, renewables, natural gas and nuclear.
More information is available at duke-energy.com and
the Duke Energy News Center. Follow Duke Energy
on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook,
and visit illumination for stories about the people and
innovations powering our energy transition.
Contact: Audrey Stasko
Media line: 800.559.3853
Twitter: @DE_AudreyS
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SOURCE Duke Energy