FPL: Power restored to most of Brevard

Update, 8 a.m., Oct. 11

FPL reports that only 300 customers are still without power.

Update, 7 a.m., Oct. 10

FPL reports 5,860 customers are still without power. Power has been restored to 220,190 customers.

Update, 5 p.m., Oct. 9

22,680 are still without power, while 203,730 have had power restored.

Update, 1 p.m., Oct. 9

36,570 customers remain without power in Brevard County, according to FPL.  Power has been restored to 191,840 customers.

Update, 8 a.m., Oct. 9

FPL reports that 43,710 customers remain without power, while 186,360 have had power restored.

Update, 9 p.m., Oct. 8: 

Only 78,660 customers remain without power, according to Florida Power & Light Co., while 159,010 have had power restored.

Update, 3 p.m., Oct. 8:

FPL reports that it has restored power to more than half of the customers affected by outages: 107,380 customers remain without power, while 130,290 had power restored.

Virtually all Brevard County residents and businesses should see their power restored by the end of the day Sunday, Florida Power & Light Co. estimates.

MORE: Track FPL outages

Original story:

The utility says more than 78 percent of its Brevard customers had their power out for some period of time as a result of Hurricane Matthew. That’s 237,670 customer accounts out of the total 304,400 customer accounts FPL has in Brevard. As of 2 p.m. Saturday, service was restored to 130,290 of the affected customers.

FPL President and Chief Executive Officer Eric Silagy said utility crews are working day and night and as fast as they can to restore service.

“We won’t stop working around the clock until everyone’s lights are back on,” Silagy said.

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Based on the current assessment and resources dedicated to the restoration, FPL expects to complete power restoration to essentially all customers by the end of the day Sunday. However, pockets of flooding and severe damage likely will extend outages for some customers until the end of the day Monday.

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Silagy said the company also will keep safety of its crews as a primary concern. For example, crews do not work in bucket trucks if winds exceed 35 mph.

“This is a dangerous job, and if you make a mistake it will kill you,” Silagy said during a news conference at the company’s Melbourne service center on Ellis Road.

[More: Hurricane Matthew coverage ]

Silagy said very few power poles were knocked over as a result of the storm — less than 30 statewide out of the company’s more than 1.2 million poles. He noted the company’s efforts to harden its utility poles to help prevent that from happening.

Most of the outages were the result of trees, branches and other projectiles hitting utility lines or the result of damaged transformers, Silagy said. The company has about 74,000 miles of power lines in Florida.

Silagy said areas where FPL has underground utilities are better protected from hurricanes. But the tradeoff is that, if repairs need to be made, underground utilities are more difficult to access than traditional overhead power lines, if flooding results in outages in areas where there are underground lines.

“Unfortunately, there is no silver bullet” to prevent all power outages, Silagy said.

Silagy said, even with the widespread FPL outages, “we’ve dodged a really big bullet,” since the storm hugged the coastline, rather than plowing into Florida.

Statewide, 976,440 of FPL’s 4.85 million customers (about 20 percent) experienced power outages during Hurricane Matthew. Brevard was the county with the most outages in FPL territory, followed by Volusia (173,130 customers), Palm Beach (100,910) and St. Johns (79,910).

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More than 15,000 utility workers are involved in the FPL power restoration effort statewide, including FPL’s employees; employees of its contractors; and employees of other utilities from as far north as Massachusetts and as far west as Texas.

“We know it’s difficult to be without power,” FPL spokesman Bill Orlove said.

Among FPL’s energy grid improvements within Brevard County in the last decade, it has:

• Upgraded and strengthened 61 main power lines.

•Inspected 138,170 power poles for strength, and upgraded of replaced the ones that required action.

•Cleared tree limbs and vegetation along 11,640 miles of power lines.

•Inspected 412 main power lines.

•Installed automated switches on 170 main power lines and 3,557 smaller power lines. These switches help speed up power restoration.

•Installed flood-protection measures, including real-time water monitors, on 30 substations.

Contact Berman at 321-242-3649 or dberman@floridatoday. com, on Twitter at @bydaveberman and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/dave.berman.54