JUNO BEACH, Fla. – Florida Power & Light Company (FPL) earned PA Consulting’s ReliabilityOne® National Reliability Award for the seventh time in eight years, highlighting the value of the company’s investments to make its energy grid more reliable and resilient for its nearly 5.8 million customers.
“We are once again honored to receive this prestigious national award for the most reliable energy company in the U.S,” said Eric Silagy, chairman and CEO of FPL. “Winning this award seven of the last eight years is an incredible accomplishment and reflects our employees’ steadfast commitment to deliver reliable electricity that our customers can count on in good weather and bad. For nearly two decades, our team has worked tirelessly to build the nation’s most intelligent and reliable energy grid. Our customers have benefited from millions of interruptions avoided, faster restorations during severe weather and a more than 45% improvement in service reliability since 2011. While I am proud of the job our team is doing, we are never satisfied. We will continue to implement new and innovative ways to further improve reliability all of us can depend on – including future generations.”
FPL has made significant investments to build a stronger, smarter, more storm-resilient energy grid since the historic hurricane seasons of 2004-2005, and these investments have benefitted its customers by enabling the company to restore power more quickly following severe weather. Most recently, Hurricane Ian, a high-end Category 4 storm, caused catastrophic damage in Southwest Florida and impacted more than 2.1 million customers in FPL's service area.
While no energy grid is hurricane-proof, detailed assessments following Hurricane Ian confirmed the resiliency of FPL’s storm-hardened energy grid. Even given the unprecedented devastation caused by Hurricane Ian, no significant structural damage occurred at any FPL power plant, and FPL did not lose a single transmission structure. Initial forensics also showed that FPL’s efforts to systematically underground neighborhood power lines and install smart grid devices along the energy grid helped speed its restoration efforts and avoid more than 400,000 customer outages.
Additionally, FPL continues to improve reliability for customers by hardening main power lines that serve critical community facilities; inspecting 100% of distribution power poles and replacing those that no longer meet FPL's industry-leading standards for strength; replacing wooden transmission structures with new ones made of steel or concrete; installing more than 6 million smart meters and 200,000 intelligent devices to help detect and prevent power outages; and maintaining trees and other vegetation along power lines.
Honoring organizations that demonstrate sustained leadership, innovation and achievement in energy reliability, the ReliabilityOne® National Reliability Award is decided primarily on statistics that measure frequency and duration of customer outages, along with other criteria measures.
The award is widely considered to be one of the most prestigious honors in the energy industry, a representation of a company’s commitment to providing customers with reliable service.
“For the last 22 years, the ReliabilityOne® Awards have highlighted outstanding electric utility providers who resiliently build a more positive future for their customers,” said Gregg Edeson and Derek HasBrouck, PA Consulting’s ReliabilityOne® Co-Program Directors. “We are pleased to name Florida Power & Light Company as an industry leader for delivering outstanding service and restoration efforts while balancing customer needs.”
In addition to the National Reliability Award, FPL also won PA Consulting’s Outstanding Reliability Performance Award for the Southeast metropolitan region for the ninth consecutive year. Mike Spoor, who recently retired from the company after serving as VP of Gulf Power, also received the Outstanding Contributor to Reliability Award.
Florida Power & Light Company
As America’s largest electric utility, Florida Power & Light Company serves more customers and sells more power than any other utility, providing clean, affordable, reliable electricity to nearly 5.8 million accounts, or more than 12 million people. FPL operates one of the cleanest power generation fleets in the U.S. and in 2022 won the ReliabilityOne® National Reliability Award for the seventh time in the last eight years. The company received the top ranking in the southern U.S. among large electric providers, according to J.D. Power’s 2021 Electric Utility Residential Customer Satisfaction StudySM and 2021 Electric Utility Business Customer Satisfaction StudySM. The company was also recognized in 2020 as one of the most trusted U.S. electric utilities by Escalent for the seventh consecutive year. FPL is a subsidiary of Juno Beach, Florida-based NextEra Energy, Inc. (NYSE: NEE), a clean energy company widely recognized for its efforts in sustainability, corporate responsibility, ethics and compliance, and diversity. NextEra Energy is ranked No. 1 in the electric and gas utilities industry in Fortune’s 2022 list of “World’s Most Admired Companies” and recognized on Fortune’s 2021 list of companies that “Change the World.” NextEra Energy is also the parent company of NextEra Energy Resources, LLC, which, together with its affiliated entities, is the world’s largest generator of renewable energy from the wind and sun and a world leader in battery storage. For more information about NextEra Energy companies, visit these websites: www.NextEraEnergy.com, www.FPL.com, www.NextEraEnergyResources.com.
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PA Consulting’s ReliabilityOne® awards are presented to electric utilities providing their customers with the highest levels of reliability in the industry. PA Consulting’s ReliabilityOne® study is based on standard industry reliability statistics that measure the frequency and duration of electric power outages. ReliabilityOne® participants on average experienced 35% fewer sustained outages, and outages were 50% shorter than the average US investor owned utility. PA Consulting has been analyzing electric utility performance since 1987. For more information about PA Consulting, visit www.paconsulting.com/energy.