Florida Power and Light workers laid underground utility lines along Taylor Lane Northwest in Port Charlotte on March 27 as part of an ongoing program created to harden its equipment against future storms. 

Starting in 2018 as a pilot program, Storm Secure Underground Program, or SSUP, was expanded in 2022. So far, FPL workers have undergrounded more than 150 neighborhood lines in Charlotte County and North Port, said Mac Herron, senior project manager. 

The year before the pilot program started, Hurricane Irma affected FPL’s entire service area of 35 counties, causing more than 4.4 million FPL customers to lose power, company officials said. 

“The leading cause of outages is vegetation; trees can become projectiles,” FPL spokesman Shawn Johnson said. 

Burying power lines underground made sense, and that’s why the program was initiated. 

Troy Todd, senior project manager with FPL, said underground lines perform 50% better on a day-to-day basis, as they do not experience the same number of outages that above-ground lines do. 

When complete, the Taylor Lane Northwest project will place nearly 50 neighborhood lines underground, stretching more than 35 miles and serving about 2,400 customers. 

An additional 400 neighborhood lines were laid in West and Southwest Florida, and across Florida more than 2,000 neighborhood lines were undergrounded, according to FPL. 

Herron said along the West Region, of which Charlotte County is a part, 108 overhead miles have been completed serving 5,800 customers in Port Charlotte, North Port and Punta Gorda. 

Since the program’s inception, “we’ve converted 14,000 customers,” he said. 

FPL operates 75,000 miles of power lines covering more than half the state according to the company’s website.  

Approximately 50% of the company’s distribution systems, neighborhood and main power lines, are underground, Johnson said. 

Herron said the goal is to harden all the lines. 

In instances where poles will not be replaced by underground utilities, including when a cable company shares the poles and chooses not to underground its cables, new poles made of concrete or steel would replace the older wooden ones. 

Areas prone to flooding cannot have underground lines, so they will have poles, albeit hardened ones replacing the old. 

FPL learned a lot since seven storms hit the state in 18 months, Johnson said. That’s when SSUP was designed. 

In the aftermath of Hurricane Charley, which hit Punta Gorda in August 2004, power was out for weeks in many cases. 

After Hurricane Ian in September 2022, power was back on for all users in eight days, but two-thirds of FPL customers had their power back on in just one day, and 75% of customers had power restored in two days, said Johnson, who attributed this to “the hardening and strengthening of power lines.” 

Customers pay for storm damages, which financially affect their utility provider, but beginning April 1, customers will see the storm surcharge for Hurricanes Ian and Nicole coming off their bills. On May 1, a fuel surcharge will be lower than expected, as the price of fuel has been lower, Johnson said. 

Before FPL could switch to the SSUP program, it had to get approval from Florida Public Services Commission. 

This year an additional 100 neighborhood lines will be placed in Charlotte County alone, and more than 50 lines will be undergrounded in Sarasota, Lee and Collier counties, for an additional 1,100 neighborhood lines across Florida. 

FPL vows that its work hardening its systems, including power lines and substations, will continue into the future. 

Currently, 90% of new distribution lines the company is installing are underground, according to FPL.