Duke Energy Florida pouring $1.4B into energy grid
A day after Hurricane Michael ferociously slammed the Florida Panhandle, electric power company Duke Energy Florida is taking steps to reinforce the power grid.
“We are going to be looking to spend about $1.4 billion over the next five years, really looking for resiliency in our grid,” Duke Energy Florida President Catherine Stempien said on Thursday to Charles Payne on FOX Business’ “Varney & Co.”
Hurricane Michael, now a tropical storm, made landfall on Wednesday afternoon in the Florida Panhandle as a Category 4 storm with 155 mph sustained winds.
The storm left a violent trail of disaster, knocking down power lines, uprooting trees and destroying homes and businesses.
Duke Energy Florida, which serves the Panhandle, projects that a little over 30,000 customers have lost power as a result of the hurricane.
“Some of those households are completely devastated,” she said. “Especially in the Mexico Beach area, Apalachicola, Port Saint Joe — these are areas that we are going to have to be completely rebuilding our system — transmission and distribution.”
Once rebuilding begins, Duke Energy will focus its efforts on strengthening the energy infrastructure by replacing wood poles with steel, "undergrounding" outage prone above-ground power lines, and implementing a “self-healing” smart-grid system, she said, which is designed to keep power running.