FPL’s grid investments lead to best overall service reliability

In a recent filing with the Florida Public Service Commission, Florida Power & Light Company (FPL) reported 2024 as the best year ever for the company’s overall system reliability according to key industry metrics. This includes the company's lowest average number of minutes an FPL customer experienced an outage — surpassing the previous company-best performance set in 2023.

FPL invests in infrastructure and technology to ensure its customers have reliable service in good weather and bad. FPL’s reliability has ranked in the top 10% nationally [see footnote] while its customer bills have remained well below the national average for more than a decade.

• 40% improvement in overall system reliability in the past two decades.

• 59% better service reliability, systemwide, than the national average and the best among all investor-owned utilities in Florida.

• 82% of FPL’s main power lines, systemwide, are hardened, serving critical services such as hospitals and 911 call centers.

• 96% of FPL’s transmission structures are steel or concrete.

• 3,000 Storm Secure Underground Program projects have converted neighborhood power lines underground since 2019.

• 227,000 intelligent devices across the FPL grid detect potential issues, helping to prevent outages before they happen and enabling FPL to restore power faster following outages.

• 2.7 million total customer outages avoided, systemwide, in 2024 with smart grid technology.

Reliability enhancements in Northwest Florida:

• 32% fewer wooden transmission structures in Northwest Florida as part of FPL’s conversion to harden the grid with steel or concrete structures.

• 63% improvement in overall system reliability in Northwest Florida since 2018.

• 90 miles of neighborhood power lines undergrounded in Northwest Florida.

• 9,100 smart grid devices installed in Northwest Florida.

“We strive to provide reliable electricity to our customers while keeping their bills as low as possible,” said FPL President and CEO Armando Pimentel. “We’re hardening the grid, undergrounding power lines and adding smart grid technology that can help us avoid some power outages and restore power faster when outages do occur. The investments that we are making on behalf of our customers mean they are experiencing, on average, fewer minutes of interrupted service than ever before. FPL is now nearly 60% more reliable than the average utility, despite Florida’s severe weather.”

Footnote: Based on PA Consulting’s most recent reliability benchmarking analysis (2023 results), with data from approximately 100 investor-owned utilities (IOU’s), with the vast majority utilizing IEEE 2.5 beta methodology.