SAN DIEGO, Nov. 17, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Florida Power & Light Company (FPL) today announced that it has been named the winner of the 2016 ReliabilityOne™ National Reliability Excellence Award by PA Consulting Group, Inc. This is the second consecutive year the company has received the national award. FPL was also the proud recipient of the ReliabilityOne™ Award for Outstanding Technology and Innovation in the U.S. and Outstanding Reliability Performance in the Southeast, demonstrating continued leadership in technology innovation to deliver reliable service for customers.
"We are once again honored to receive this prestigious national award for most reliable energy company in the U.S.," said Eric Silagy, president and CEO for FPL. "This award reflects the unwavering commitment of our employees to deliver reliable electricity at an affordable price that customers can count on in good weather and bad. Since Hurricane Wilma struck Florida more than a decade ago, the Florida Public Service Commission has adopted rules and implemented a process for approval of storm hardening, pole inspection and replacement plans, and vegetation management. We have invested more than $2 billion to make our grid stronger, smarter and more storm-resilient. During the past five years, we have improved service reliability by about 25 percent, delivering benefits for our customers. That was evident given our restoration effort during Hurricanes Hermine and Matthew. Continued investments to strengthen our system and implement revolutionary smart grid technology ensured our strong performance, resulting in fewer outages and faster restoration for our customers."
During Hurricane Matthew, in particular, which impacted 1.2 million FPL customers across the state in October, smart grid automated switches on poles and wires prevented approximately 118,000 outages, further validating that the significant smart grid investments made over the last decade are benefiting customers. In addition, main power lines that have been strengthened, which are designed to withstand severe weather conditions, also performed approximately 1.4 times better than non-strengthened main power lines. FPL attributes these accomplishments and national recognition to its team of nearly 9,000 employees who continuously work to improve service for its customers, along with its continued investments to build a stronger, smarter energy grid, including:
- Strengthening more than 600 main power lines, including those that serve more than 700 critical community facilities such as hospitals, police and fire stations, and 911 communication centers;
- Placing more than 450 main power lines underground;
- Clearing vegetation – a major cause of power outages – from more than 135,000 miles of power lines;
- Completing 1.4 million power pole inspections, and upgrading or replacing those that no longer meet FPL's standards for strength; and
- Installing more than 4.8 million smart meters and 36,000 intelligent devices to help predict, reduce and prevent power outages, and restore power faster if outages occur.
The ReliabilityOne™ National Reliability Award is given to the regional award recipient that has demonstrated sustained leadership, innovation and achievement in the area of electric reliability. FPL received the ReliabilityOne™ Award for Outstanding Reliability Performance in the Southeast region of the U.S., making the company eligible for the national award. The company was also awarded the Outstanding Technology and Innovation Award in the U.S. and Outstanding Personal Achievement Award for Jim Patterson, general manager for nuclear transmission switchyards for FPL and parent company NextEra Energy.
The selection criteria for the ReliabilityOne™ National Reliability Award are both quantitative and qualitative including:
- Superior regional performance
- Sustained performance over time
- Improved performance over time
- Leadership in outage data collection and reporting systems, processes, procedures and controls
- Organizational and cultural focus on reliability
- Communication, planning, preparation and response to major outage events
- Contributions to regional system security and reliability
The ReliabilityOne™ award is given annually to utilities that have excelled in delivering reliable electric service to their customers. All utilities operating electric delivery networks in North America are eligible for consideration for the ReliabilityOne™ award. Selection of provisional recipients is based primarily on system reliability statistics that measure the frequency and duration of customer outages. After provisional recipients are selected, each company undergoes an on-site certification process, which provides an independent review and confirmation of the policies, processes and systems used to collect, analyze and report a company's reliability results.
"For more than 15 years, the ReliabilityOne™ Awards have helped bring recognition to those utilities that have delivered the highest level of service reliability to their customers, leveraging technology, communications, and information to make the grid smarter than it has ever been," said Derek HasBrouck, PA Consulting Group's ReliabilityOne™ Program Director. "As recipient of the ReliabilityOne™ National Reliability Excellence Award once again this year, FPL has combined leading edge customer-centric grid analytics with outstanding efforts to 'engineer out' electric service interruptions."
Florida Power & Light Company
Florida Power & Light Company is the third-largest electric utility in the United States, serving more than 4.8 million customer accounts or more than 10 million people across nearly half of the state of Florida. FPL's typical 1,000-kWh residential customer bill is approximately 30 percent lower than the latest national average and, in 2015, was the lowest in Florida among reporting utilities for the sixth year in a row. FPL's service reliability is better than 99.98 percent, and its highly fuel-efficient power plant fleet is one of the cleanest among all utilities nationwide. The company received the top ranking in the southern U.S. among large electric providers, according to the J.D. Power 2016 Electric Utility Residential Customer Satisfaction StudySM, and was recognized in 2016 as one of the most trusted U.S. electric utilities by Market Strategies International. A leading Florida employer with approximately 8,800 employees, FPL is a subsidiary of Juno Beach, Fla.-based NextEra Energy, Inc. (NYSE: NEE), a clean energy company widely recognized for its efforts in sustainability, ethics and diversity, and has been ranked No. 1 in the electric and gas utilities industry in Fortune's 2016 list of "World's Most Admired Companies." 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. For more information about NextEra Energy companies, visit these websites: www.NextEraEnergy.com, www.FPL.com, www.NextEraEnergyResources.com.
About PA Consulting Group
An independent firm of over 2,600 people, we operate globally from offices across the Americas, Europe, the Nordics, the Gulf and Asia Pacific. We are experts in consumer and manufacturing, defense and security, energy and utilities, financial services, government, healthcare, life sciences, and transport, travel and logistics. Our deep industry knowledge together with skills in management consulting, technology and innovation allows us to challenge conventional thinking and deliver exceptional results that have a lasting impact on businesses, governments and communities worldwide. Our clients choose us because we don't just believe in making a difference. We believe in making the difference. For more information about PA Consulting Group, visit www.paconsulting.com. PA's ReliabilityOne™ awards are presented to electric utilities providing their customers with the highest levels of reliability in the industry. PA's ReliabilityOne™ study is based on standard industry reliability statistics that measure the frequency and duration of electric power outages and has been analyzing electric utility performance since 1987. For more information about PA Consulting Group, visit www.paconsulting.com/energy.
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SOURCE Florida Power & Light Company
