Improving Our Systems

At FPL, we understand how much you depend on your electric service. When you flip the switch, you expect the lights to come on. We agree.

That’s why we’re committed to building a stronger, smarter grid to deliver electricity you can count on in good weather and bad. FPL has improved its service reliability by more than 30 percent over the past 10 years. But we’re never satisfied. We work year-round to improve your service even more.

Extensive improvements every year

Since 2006, we've invested more than $4 billion to strengthen our electric system and make it more resilient to severe weather. We also continue to deploy innovative, industry-leading solutions to improve the grid – investments that are paying off every day for our customers with better service reliability. And, when outages occur, these improvements help us restore your power faster. Here are some of the ways we strengthen the system:

• Inspecting power poles. We continuously inspect all of the 1.2 million power poles and replace those that don’t meet our standards for strength.
• Clearing vegetation from power lines. Tree limbs and palm fronds growing near power lines are a common cause of power flickers and outages. We proactively clear vegetation from 15,000 miles of lines each year – the distance from Miami to Tokyo ... and back.
• Strengthening main power lines. We have strengthened or undergrounded 47 percent of our main power lines, including those serving critical community services, such as hospitals, police and fire stations, and emergency communication systems.
  
• Inspecting power lines. Infrared cameras can find otherwise undetectable issues with power lines and equipment. This infrared camera technology helps us locate many potential problems and address them before they cause an outage.

Cutting-edge technology

We’re investing in advanced smart grid technology and exploring emerging technologies, including small unmanned aircraft systems that help make the grid stronger and smarter, and improve service for our customers.

Smart grid upgrades help prevent power issues and, if your lights go out, help us get them back on faster. Smart grid technology, including smart meters and automated switches, improve reliability by:

• Helping identify and diagnose equipment issues early so we can service them proactively, preventing many outages before they occur.
• Automatically rerouting electricity around trouble spots, confining outages to smaller areas.
• Pinpointing the location of outages quickly – often before customers call to report them – so we can restore power faster.