Back to Top

Challenge:  

  • Florida Power & Light Company’s coastal service territory experiences frequent hurricanes, leaving it prone to long-lasting outages 
  • Other geographical conditions add to the challenges, such as tropical storms, salt spray, and year-round vegetation growth 

Solution: 

An integrated suite of grid-protection solutions, including: 

  • 4,000 S&C IntelliRupter® PulseCloser® Fault Interrupters 
  • 80,000 S&C TripSaver® II Cutout-Mounted Reclosers 
  • IntelliTeam® SG Automatic Restoration System 
  • VacuFuse® Self-Resetting Interrupters 
  • Adoption of extreme wind loading standards so the system could handle hurricane-force winds 
  • Segmentation of feeder lines to reduce the number of customers affected by an outage 
  • Development of a smart-grid assessment team to perform restoration replacement approaches immediately following a storm 

Results: 

  • Post-hurricane restoration time shortened from 18 days to 10 days 
    • Result: $8 billion back into Florida’s economy 
  • 4.2 million customer interruptions avoided over six years from IntelliRupter® fault interrupters 
  • 8,500 interruptions avoided over four years from TripSaver II reclosers 
When building a reliability-improvement program, it’s not simply one solution but several solutions that come together to make signi­ficant change. Extraordinary results come from a larger, multiple item strategy.
Ron Critelli, Senior Director of Power Delivery Engineering & Technical Services, Florida Power & Light Company



Video: See how FPL’s resilience plan helped its customers in the aftermath of Hurricane Irma.

Read the Full Case Study

A Comprehensive Commitment Challenges Power Reliability’s Status Quo Case Study Thumbnail
Case Study

A Comprehensive Commitment Challenges Power Reliability's Status Quo

What grid upgrades did FPL make to shorten its hurricane restoration time by eight days?

Download