“While we are committed to restoring power to customers as quickly as possible after a hurricane, I am not willing to sacrifice safety for speed,” said Florida Power & Light Company President and CEO Eric Silagy on Friday. after the company concluded its two-week storm. preparation drill.
“The number one priority of every employee and contractor working to restore power is to return loved ones to their homes,” he said. “This has always been at the heart of our hurricane response and remains at the core of everything we do this hurricane season.”
In a typical year, teams would set up large camps
When a major hurricane makes landfall, there will be power outages.
During a typical season, if a hurricane is forecast to make landfall, the potentially affected company will immediately begin evaluating the number of crews needed to recover power quickly.
Asking for help from partner utilities across the country is known as “mutual assistance.” And it is a hallmark of the industry.
But because of the way critical operations of labor and equipment unfold, standard procedures would almost certainly collide with social distancing and travel guidelines aimed at stopping the spread of the coronavirus.
Once assistance is secured, out-of-state or associated utility companies often set up camps at preparedness sites, which are like miniature cities of hundreds or thousands of people near what will be the most affected areas. Materials, bucket trucks, food, lodging and showers for the crew are basic elements of the sites.
The objective is to ensure that crews are as close as possible to the worst damage, ensuring a minimum response time. That eventually leads to a quick restoration after the hurricane.
Once the storm system has passed and it is safe for crews to work, line workers hit the ground to restore power. Their goal is to reconnect as many customers in the shortest possible time, working first on power plants and on major power lines, along with the main lines that supply electricity to critical facilities such as hospitals, supermarkets, and gas stations. firefighters. Then they focus on communities until each customer comes back online.
This year it will look different
Instead of a massive staging site for line workers, it will break down into a myriad of “micro staging sites” in one area, the guide states. The teams at each site will work as autonomous modules with limited movement. This will limit potential exposure to the virus for critical workers and allow them to maintain social distancing guidelines and daily health screenings.
But the new logistics could mean it will take longer to restore power.
Florida Power & Light Company may not be able to muster a restoration workforce as large as in previous major hurricanes, it stated in its hurricane season start press release. That may mean it would take longer to restore power after a hurricane like Irma in 2017, when the company spent 10 days restoring power to 4.4 million affected customers with a workforce of 27,000, he warned.
Each storm is different and brings its own set of dangers. For example, a slow moving tropical storm can sometimes cause more damage than a fast moving category 1 hurricane.
So, too, energy restoration efforts often differ
Tropical storm Christopher made landfall on June 7 in southeast Louisiana, and restoration delays were minimal. But Christopher was not a giant Category 5 hurricane, so it would take tens of thousands of crews to restart the power grid.
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