Fed up with losing power in hurricanes?

FPL kicks off program to bury power lines in trouble spots

Florida Power & Light Co. has begun a pilot project of burying power lines in neighborhood trouble spots across the state, including two in Boca Raton that were hard hit during the 2016 and 2017 hurricanes or have frequent outages. ¶ The pilot program focuses on how FPL can cost-effectively bury portions of neighborhood power lines “to enhance reliability in good weather and bad,” said Bill Orlove, FPL spokesman.

Why not your neighborhood? That could come: Juno Beachbased FPL says it is planning 400 to 500 undergrounding projects over the next three years. But FPL customers can’t call the utility and ask that lines near their home be buried. The utility has already chosen the sites, based on certain criteria. The homes experienced:

— Power outages during 2016’s Hurricane Matthew or 2017’s Hurricane Irma.

— Frequent outages on a dayto-day basis.

— Outages caused by overgrown vegetation.

Orlove said there’s no additional

cost to residents for the undergrounding. The pilot project is include di nF P L’ s total grid strengthening program that it has proposed to the Florida Public Service Commission. Once FPL identifies a possible undergrounding project, it reaches out to the customers involved to discuss the project and easements required.

Two of the three pilot projects completed so far are in Boca Raton, with the third is in Sarasota, Orlove said.

One Boca Raton project is a block near Pine Breeze Park, bordered on the north and south by Southwest 20th and 21st Streets and on the east and west by Las Casas and Gonzalo roads.

The other completed site is near the corner of South Ocean Boulevard and Osceola Drive.

In Pompano Beach, there’s an undergrounding project underway in the 5100 block of Northeast 14th Terrace and 5200 block

of Northeast 14th Way.

“The average neighborhood power line includes approximately 30 customers,” Orlove said.

Jim Crabtree, who has lived in Boca Raton since 1976, said his home’s power would go out frequently, whether there was a storm or not. A few months ago, FPL asked to move power lines from above his backyard to underground and he was thrilled.

“This is going to help a lot,” Crabtree said.

He said neighbors’ trees would often grow so big they could pull down the power lines. Now, that’s not a problem. “They did a great job,” he said of FPL’s contractor.

Enrique Formoso, project manager for FPL, said FPL has to get easements, or permission to work, from every resident in the block or other segment of a neighborhood it plans to bury lines.

If all residents don’t sign off, FPL moves on. Some residents don’t want a transformer box — just over 3 feet long by 3 feet wide by 2 feet tall — installed in their yard while others don’t like the idea of giving the easement, he said.

Formoso said FPL uses a machine to drill down 24 inches to 36 inches to bury the lines, but the yard is not torn up. A new box on the house may be installed to enclose the lines from underground to the home.

FPL, which provides power to half the state or about 10 million people, said it is conducting the pilot because underground power lines performed better than expected to keep the lights on in Hurricane Irma.

Besides being resilient in a storm, “hardened” power lines — those with stronger materials or put underground — perform 40 percent better in day-to-day operations than those power lines that are not hardened, which means fewer outages experienced by customers, the utility said.

After the pilot projects are completed and data analyzed, more customers could see FPL knocking on their door to put lines to their homes underground.

“After the three years, we’ll determine where we go from here,” Orlove said.

PHOTOS BY JOE CAVARETTA/SUN SENTINEL FPL announced a plan Friday to upgrade all its main power poles within six years.

FPL is burying some neighborhood power lines under a new pilot program to improve resiliency in storms.