Dive Brief:
- Florida Power & Light is the nation's most reliable electric utility, according to PA Consulting Group, which annually issues its ReliabilityOne Awards to North American power providers.
- The firm cited FP&L's investments in new technologies and innovation, as well as a focus on "all aspects of reliability including momentary outages, power quality, sustained outages and storm response." The award is considered one of the most prestigious in the industry, Smart Grid News reports.
- The Florida utility edged out San Diego Gas & Electric, which last year took home the top honor. But the firm made a point to award SDG&E "Outstanding Response to a Major Outage Event," for the utility's work during the May 2014 California wildfires.
Dive Insight:
Florida's largest utility topped PA Consulting's rankings, but the firm also recognized five other regional, investor-owned utilities for reliability and grid durability.
“The ReliabilityOne Awards program recognizes electric utilities for providing customers with the highest levels of reliability in the industry,” said Jeff Lewis, director of the ReliabilityOne program. “With the energy industry continuing to be challenged by new regulations and threats such as cyber-attacks, it is imperative that we recognize the leaders in this industry who are paving the way with innovative technology and superior customer engagement."
The six regional award recipients include:
- Northeast – Consolidated Edison;
- Mid-Atlantic – Public Service Electric & Gas Co.;
- Southeast – Florida Power & Light.
- West – San Diego Gas & Electric;
- Midwest – We Energies;
- Plains – Xcel Energy Minnesota.
The firm cited FP&L's investments in technology and innovation, saying it has "has allowed them to take significant steps towards strengthening their infrastructure, enhancing analytics, developing real time monitoring and predictive capabilities, providing field crews with extraordinary information, pushing the envelope on research and development, and maximizing efficiency."
"FPL is focused on all aspects of reliability," PA Consulting said in a statement.
The utility responded, noting that since 2006, FP&L invested more than $2 billion to strengthen the grid and has improved service reliability by approximately 20% in the last five years.
The utility has cleared vegetation from 120,000 miles of power lines, inspected 1.2 million utility poles, and installed advanced smart grid technologies that include 4.8 million smart meters and more than 12,000 other intelligent devices.
"These investments, which we began following Hurricane Wilma a decade ago ... have positioned FPL to deliver electric service that today is more than 99.98 percent reliable," said FP&L President and CEO Eric Silagy.
SDG&E, which won top awards last year, was noted for its response to California wildfires last year. PA Consulting said the utility "used state-of-the-art computing and advanced analytics to monitor the largest utility weather network in the world and track winds on every high risk circuit every ten minutes."
A dozen wildfires affected SDG&E's service territory over six days last year, interrupting over 50,000 customers, destroying 65 structures, 46 homes and causing over $60M in damages.
