FPL toughening up Navarre Beach power grid ahead of Hurricane Season

Anyone who's lived on the Gulf Coast long enough to experience a destructive, major hurricane knows that things don't necessarily go back to normal once the storm has passed.

Particularly in hard-hit areas, residents can spend days or even weeks in dark, hot homes waiting for the utility company to restore the power. And while Florida Power & Light can't prevent storm damage and power outages, company officials say they are taking steps to make restoring the power grid faster and less expensive.

This year, FPL will strengthen nearly 145 miles of power lines across Northwest Florida, equating to roughly 3,300 pole replacements. One project that's currently underway is the hardening of around three dozen utility poles in Navarre Beach.

"Navarre Beach, of course, being a barrier island, we want to make sure that it is ready ahead of storm season, so the team is replacing approximately 35-ish wooden poles with steel or concrete ones there along White Sands Boulevard and Gulf Boulevard," said Shawn Johnson, a spokesman for FPL. "The goal would be to have it completed in the next couple of months ? so, right at the beginning of storm season ? and of course the idea is, while it may not make Navarre Beach storm proof ... it will certainly help us to respond faster out there."

According to Johnson, steel and concrete poles are built to withstand wind loads of up to 145 mile per hour, making them much less likely to be damaged or toppled by wind and debris during severe weather.

"The poles that we're installing along Navarre Beach are about 8,000 pounds, so it's not going to snap in half, and in most cases if there is a storm that will come through, as opposed to having to replace the whole pole itself, we only have to maybe restring the line because the pole is still standing."

Along with replacing poles, FPL has invested in other safeguards like "undergrounding" utility infrastructure in inland areas where wind damage is a greater threat than flooding and storm surge, using intelligent technology that can reroute power around trouble spots, and a "Smart Trimming" program to proactively identify trees that could damage or fall on powerlines.

"There was a point in time where our vegetation crews had to draw with pen and paper to track where vegetation was and the severity and density of vegetation along our powerlines, but now we are able to track that remotely and make those decisions accordingly before we get out into the field," Johnson said. "Ultimately, with the idea of us being more efficient to keep costs low for customers."

Johnson said FPL started making these types of investments in 2006, and a good example of the dividends is the difference between recovery from Hurricane Wilma, which struck South Florida as a Category 3 hurricane in October 2005, and Hurricane Ian, a devastating Category 5 storm in September 2022 responsible for 156 fatalities and almost $113 billion in damages, according to the National Hurricane Center.

"That Hurricane Wilma restoration took multiple weeks, whereas Hurricane Ian, as a result of a lot of these different investments, we were able to get two-thirds of customers back online within one day, 75% of customers back online within two days, and then all customers back online within eight days," Johnson said. "And a lot of those customers from the back end were in the hardest hit areas of Southwest Florida."

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Since 2019, when FPL began serving Northwest Florida, the utility has strengthened nearly 45 miles of main power lines in Escambia County, roughly 40 miles of main power lines in Santa Rosa County and more than 190 miles of main power lines across Northwest Florida, according to FPL.

Johnson said in addition to the work underway in Navarre Beach this year, crews in Santa Rosa County are monitoring and maintaining vegetation around 1,200 miles of power lines and inspecting the strength and reliability of about 4,000 utility poles.

Speaking broadly of FPL's storm hardening efforts, Johnson said, "We've seen that these investments speed restoration times following severe weather events, and ultimately the overarching goal is to get the lights back on for customers as fast as possible if and when storms do come our way."

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Florida Power & Light puts concrete poles along Gulf Boulevard