Power upgrades ahead of peak hurricane season

AccuWeather

AccuWeather's Leslie Hudson was live from Orlando, Florida, on Aug. 12, with more on how power companies are preparing for the peak hurricane season.

Transcript

00:00As hurricane season ramps up, power companies across Florida are working to stay ahead of the

00:06next major storm. From smart meters to self-healing grids, how about that? I like that. They're

00:11investing in new technology that already is helping to restore power faster and in some cases

00:18avoiding outages altogether. That's interesting. Caught my eye. Accurate, there's Leslie Hudson.

00:23Which catches my eye. Oh, she does too. Looking lovely this morning. Orlando, Florida is where

00:28she is and she's going to talk more about how it works and what it could mean heading into peak

00:32storm season. Well, Ari and Bernie, it's not just about repairing those power lines right after a

00:42storm. Utility companies here in Florida and all across hurricane prone states are trying to

00:48implement this smart technology. That's where they can actually detect a problem in the power line

00:53from a computer at their desk at their home offices and never have to roll a truck. That helps reduce

00:59the time that you're without power by often minutes, hours, and in some cases, days. Now, I'm in a

01:06neighborhood called Baldwin Park in Orlando. It has about 12,000 residents. This is what is considered

01:12a smart grid neighborhood. About 75% of this neighborhood has underground power poles, meaning

01:18when we get hurricane force winds in this area of Orlando, which actually we do, even though we're

01:24landlocked, we do get hurricane force winds here from time to time every few years. That helps reduce

01:30the power outage problem in this area. But the smart grid power poles are becoming the wave of the

01:36future because, again, it reduces the time that you're without power and without ever having to roll

01:41out a crew. So from hurricane force winds to everyday lightning strikes, Florida's power grid

01:46is tested year-round. But companies like Duke Energy says self-healing technology is changing how they

01:52respond. Utilities are also expanding smart meter networks and continuing to bury those power lines

01:58in these high-risk areas. Their goal? Fewer outages, faster response times, and a stronger grid ahead

02:06of peak hurricane season.

02:09The smart grid just means that basically our equipment has evolved and it allows us to do a lot of things

02:16remotely. It is able to reroute our power throughout the grid without having to roll a truck or even

02:23having a dispatcher reroute power remotely. And what that means is, for example, if there is a tree that

02:31hits a line, that power line is able to detect that something has happened and gone wrong. It reroutes power

02:38automatically, often within seconds, so the customer has no idea anything has gone wrong.

02:47So Duke has already installed more than 75,000 smart grid devices across the state of Florida,

02:54and they service many states here in the southeast. They put these smart grids on the power poles,

02:59and they're also trying to implement those underground power lines like here in Baldwin Park. Last hurricane

03:05season alone, that smart grid technology helped prevent over 300,000 power outages in the state

03:12of Florida between hurricanes Debbie, Helene, and Milton. So that was a huge impact. Even though this

03:18state was hard hit by those three hurricanes, the actual power outages were significantly reduced from

03:25this smart grid technology. On top of that smart grid technology, they're also working to upgrade the

03:30poles across the state of Florida, and again, across these hurricane prone states. A lot of these poles

03:35are 50 or 60 years old. So they're trying to repair or replace them. There's about 100,000 poles in the

03:42state of Florida that actually need replacing. But even with all those upgrades, they're still saying

03:47they're making big advances in the times that we do see hurricane winds in the state of Florida or these

03:54hurricane prone states, reducing those power outages significantly. And again, oftentimes,

03:59many times without even having to roll those power crews and redirecting those power crews to where

04:04there's significant storm damage and actually helping mitigate the problem altogether. Reporting live from

04:10Baldwin Park in Orlando, Florida, I'm Leslie Hudson. Back to you. Such an important because Florida is so

04:15different than other states. You've got hurricanes that can come in from both directions. It's not that

04:21very wide. So hurricane winds can be felt across the entire state. Awesome. Important story, Leslie. Thanks for

04:26telling me.

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