FPL’s efforts to strengthen energy grid leads to best-in-nation service reliability and innovation
Company wins ReliabilityOne® National Reliability Award an unprecedented fifth time in six years
Nov 20, 2020

JUNO BEACH, Fla. – Florida Power & Light Company (FPL) today announced it earned the 2020 ReliabilityOne® National Reliability Excellence Award, presented by PA Consulting -- the fifth time in six years the company received the national award for service reliability that benefits its more than 5 million customers.

"We are honored once again to have won this prestigious national award, which recognizes the most reliable energy company in the U.S.,” said Eric Silagy, president and CEO of FPL. "Winning this award five out of the last six years is unprecedented and reflects our employees’ commitment to deliver affordable, reliable energy to the more than 5 million customers we serve. The men and women of FPL have worked tirelessly since Hurricane Wilma in 2005 to build the nation’s most intelligent and reliable energy grid. This has resulted in a wide variety of benefits for our customers, including millions of service interruptions avoided, faster restorations during hurricanes and severe weather, and a more than 30% increase in service reliability over the last decade.”

Since the historic hurricane seasons of 2004 and 2005, FPL has invested more than $5 billion to strengthen the energy grid, including:

  • Hardening main power lines that serve critical community facilities and services, such as police and fire stations, hospitals and 911 centers
  • Upgrading or replacing distribution power poles that no longer meet FPL's industry-leading standards for strength while inspecting all of the company’s 1.3 million power poles on an ongoing 8-year cycle (approximately 150,000 poles inspected annually)
  • Replacing wooden transmission structures with new ones made of steel or concrete; 96% of transmission structures are now steel or concrete and, by 2022, 100% will be steel or concrete
  • Maintaining trees and other vegetation along 15,000 miles of power lines annually
  • Installing more than 160,000 intelligent devices to help monitor and manage its energy grid, detect and prevent power outages and get life back to normal faster for customers when outages occur

The ReliabilityOne® National Reliability Award is presented to the regional-award recipient that has demonstrated sustained leadership, innovation and achievement in the area of electric reliability. Criteria for the award is based primarily on system-reliability statistics that measure frequency and duration of customer outages, along with other criteria measures, 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

After provisional recipients are selected for the award, each company undergoes a rigorous 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.

The award is generally acknowledged throughout the industry as recognition of the country’s most reliable energy provider.

“For the past 20 years, the ReliabilityOne® Awards have highlighted outstanding electric utility providers who are building a positive human future in a technology-driven world,” said Gregg Edeson, PA Consulting’s ReliabilityOne® Program Director. “We are pleased to name Florida Power & Light Company as an industry leader for delivering stellar service and restoration efforts while balancing customer needs and optimizing investments.”

FPL also earned the ReliabilityOne® Outstanding Reliability Performance Award for the Southeast metropolitan region for the seventh year in a row, as well as the Personal Achievement Award for outstanding contribution to reliability going to Bryan Olnick. Olnick, a 34-year FPL employee, retired earlier this year from the company as vice president of distribution operations.

Florida Power & Light Company
Florida Power & Light Company is the largest energy company in the United States as measured by retail electricity produced and sold, serving more than 5.1 million customer accounts or an estimated 10 million+ people across the state of Florida. FPL’s typical 1,000-kWh residential customer bill is approximately 30% lower than the latest national average and among the lowest in the U.S. FPL’s service reliability is better than 99.98%, and its highly fuel-efficient power plant fleet is one of the cleanest among all electric companies nationwide. The company was recognized in 2020 as one of the most trusted U.S. electric utilities by Escalent for the seventh consecutive year. A leading Florida employer with approximately 8,900 employees, 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, ethics and diversity, and has been ranked No. 1 in the electric and gas utilities industry in Fortune’s 2020 list of “World’s Most Admired Companies.” NextEra Energy is also the parent company of Gulf Power Company, which serves approximately 470,000 customers in eight counties throughout northwest Florida, and 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.GulfPower.com, www.NextEraEnergyResources.com.

About PA Consulting
PA Consulting believes in the power of ingenuity to build a positive human future in a technology-driven world. As strategies, technologies and innovation collide, it creates opportunity from complexity. Its diverse teams of experts combine innovative thinking and breakthrough use of technologies to progress further, faster. Clients adapt and transform, and together achieve enduring results. An innovation and transformation consultancy, PA Consulting has over 3,200 specialists in consumer, defense and security, energy and utilities, financial services, government, health and life sciences, manufacturing, and transport. Its people are strategists, innovators, designers, consultants, digital experts, scientists, engineers and technologists, and operate globally from offices across the UK, US, Europe, and the Nordics. PA. Bringing Ingenuity to Life. 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. ReliabilityOne® participants on average experienced 35% fewer sustained outages, and outages were 49% shorter than the average US investor-owned utility. PA has been analyzing electric utility performance since 1987. For more information about PA Consulting, visit www.paconsulting.com/energy.

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Editor’s note: B-roll for media use - https://fpl.sharefile.com/d-sfc5a2dbaaa1a424