FPL unveils new Cat 5-rated center in Palm Coast

PALM COAST — In the first 25 hours after Hurricane Irma passed through, power was restored to half of Florida Power and Light’s 4.4 million affected customers.

It was, according to Manny Miranda, FPL senior vice president of power delivery, “one of our very best ever performances as it related to storm response.”

The rapid restoration was no accident. FPL has been seeking better ways to address power outages since the 2004 and 2005 storm seasons, which brought seven hurricanes and two tropical storms to the Florida coast, the last being Hurricane Wilma in 2005.

This week, the energy company unveiled the newest component of this initiative: a 25,000-square-foot facility capable of withstanding the effects of a Category 5 hurricane.

This first of 12 such facilities scheduled to open by the end of 2018 across the company’s 35-county service territory is located off State Road 100 at the former site of a smaller, decades-old FPL center. The new facility will house up to 100 FPL employees and power company workers from out of state providing mutual assistance before, during and after a major storm.

Accepting the help of workers from throughout the United States and Canada means providing for their safety, something the new facility can offer.

“We’re thankful and appreciative of them being able to come down here, but with that comes our responsibility to make sure that we protect them so that they can ride out the storm,” said Miranda prior to Tuesday's ribbon-cutting ceremony.

Pre-staging workers at the Palm Coast Service Center will expedite their response following the storm, he said.

Once all of the service centers are complete, FPL expects to be able to accommodate more than 1,000 “storm riders” in them. In addition to personnel, these sites will house all necessary materials and trucks.

FPL selected the sites for the upgraded facilities based on impacts of prior storms, future infrastructure requirements and plans, the buildings’ susceptibility to flooding and their proximity to other FPL facilities.

The local facility got its first test in September — the same month construction was completed — with the arrival of Hurricane Irma. Nearly 100 workers rode out the storm there.

In all, FPL pre-staged 16,000 employees and contractors across the state. That workforce eventually grew to more than 27,000, FPL officials said.

Between major storms, the service center will see to the day-to-day operations. It will become the new home for local employees responsible for planning, designing, maintaining and repairing the energy grid.

On Tuesday, ribbon-cutting visitors were also introduced to some of the latest technology FPL is using to address power outages.

Unmanned aircraft systems — popularly known as drones — can give crews a look at equipment with greater ease than in the past.

“It goes into inaccessible areas or areas that may be dangerous for our crews to be able to get to and gives us an understanding of whether there are issues with our equipment,” said Bill Orlove, senior communications specialist for FPL.

The company first used drones after Hurricane Matthew.

According to Stephen Cross, an enterprise architect who works with emerging technologies, FPL performed more than 1,300 drone damage-assessment flights following Irma.

“This allowed us to get out there faster than we otherwise would have,” he said. “That speeds up the entire restoration effort.”

This technology wasn’t available when Wilma hit. In those days, FPL would have had to hire a helicopter company to carry out that work, a time-consuming and expensive alternative. After Irma, Orlove said, operators were able to get the company’s drones in the air within 10 minutes.

Another development is Restoration Spatial View, essentially a Google Earth overlay accessible to worker’s computers, laptops and handheld devices that zeroes in on specific trouble spots. It was developed by FPL engineers.

Workers in the field can ping individual meters to find out if they are working. They can get important information and event history for any home or transformer whether they are using RSV in the office or in the individual trucks.

The company is also touting its smart meters, currently installed on 4.9 million homes, which eliminate the need for a meter reader, provide information and allow customers to see their usage online.

In addition, FPL has installed 83,000 smart devices that help reroute power or identify problems for restoration crews when there is an outage.

In fact, according to Orlove, because the devices can communicate with each other, customers may never know there was even an outage.

According to FPL, the upgrades shaved days off the restoration of power after Irma.

“Like every storm, though, we’re going to learn from it,” said Miranda. “We will apply the lessons learned and make our processes better for the next time.”