Duke Energy's grid improvements avoid outages, speed restoration for Florida customers ahead of hurricane season

• Smart, self-healing technology in Florida helped save nearly 4 million hours of total lost outage time last year
• More than 60% of customers served by self-healing capabilities in Florida, with a goal of serving around 80% over the next few years

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla., May 26, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- As Florida heads into another hurricane season, Duke Energy Florida is reminding customers about the benefits of its smart, self-healing technology to help combat power outages during storms.

Much like a GPS can reroute traffic during an accident, self-healing technology can automatically detect power outages and quickly reroute power to restore service faster or avoid the outage altogether.

Last year, this technology helped avoid approximately 513,000 extended customer power outages in Florida, saving more than 3.8 million hours of total lost outage time.

"We're working hard to improve reliability for our customers, strengthen the grid against severe weather and enhance our response after a major storm," said Melissa Seixas, Duke Energy Florida state president. "The back-to-back storms we experienced last hurricane season serve as strong reminders of the importance of this grid-strengthening work and how these investments continue to benefit customers during power outages."

Self-healing technology also provides a smart tool to assist crews in the field with power restoration after a major storm, helping reduce outage impacts and freeing up resources to help restore power in other locations.

Currently, more than 60% of Duke Energy Florida customers are served by some form of self-healing or automated restoration technology, a 45% increase as compared to 2020.

Over the years, self-healing technology has provided tremendous benefit to Florida customers during times when Duke Energy experienced major outages on its system due to severe weather.

In a few years, Duke Energy Florida expects to have at least 80% of its customers served by some form of self-healing technology. Click here to view Duke Energy Florida's 2022 self-healing technology data by county.

Duke Energy Florida

Duke Energy Florida, a subsidiary of Duke Energy, owns 10,500 megawatts of energy capacity, supplying electricity to 1.9 million residential, commercial and industrial customers across a 13,000-square-mile service area in Florida.

Duke Energy (NYSE: DUK), a Fortune 150 company headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., is one of America's largest energy holding companies. Its electric utilities serve 8.2 million customers in North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky, and collectively own 50,000 megawatts of energy capacity. Its natural gas unit serves 1.6 million customers in North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Ohio and Kentucky. The company employs 27,600 people.

Duke Energy is executing an aggressive clean energy transition to achieve its goals of net-zero methane emissions from its natural gas business by 2030 and net-zero carbon emissions from electricity generation by 2050. The company has interim carbon emission targets of at least 50% reduction from electric generation by 2030, 50% for Scope 2 and certain Scope 3 upstream and downstream emissions by 2035, and 80% from electric generation by 2040. In addition, the company is investing in major electric grid enhancements and energy storage, and exploring zero-emission power generation technologies such as hydrogen and advanced nuclear. 

Duke Energy was named to Fortune's 2023 "World's Most Admired Companies" list and Forbes' "World's Best Employers" list. More information is available at duke-energy.com. The Duke Energy News Center contains news releases, fact sheets, photos and videos. Duke Energy's illumination features stories about people, innovations, community topics and environmental issues. Follow Duke Energy on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook.

Media contact: Audrey Stasko
Media line: 800.559.3853
Twitter: @DE_AudreyS

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SOURCE Duke Energy