Post storm venting

[gnappi]

When do the power companies get called on the carpet for poor routine maintenance being the cause of power outages?

Before Wilma I had several poles on my block that looked like swayback horses because they were in generally poor condition with splinters and crack / fissures up and down the length of the pole. Add to that hundreds of poles had trees growing all around them.

I called FP&L several times in the years and months before the storm and they either said the poles were on a schedule for replacement or that AT&T owned them.

So, Wilma took down many poles, and what happened? FP&L petitioned the "Public service Commissions" for a "temporary" rate increase to PAY (meaning the customers get to pay for the poles) for replacing poles.

What are the incentives for doing proper maintenance during the year when utilities are rewarded by having a utility boot licking authority in their back pocket to pay for maintenance? None! Year end bonuses, stock dividend payments, and raises in executive compensation all around and yup WE sat in the dark once again.

Unfortunately there will be hearings on those who died in the wake of this last storm, but not one dim little candle of light will shine onto FP&L asking "WHY" the power went out for over 6 MILLION (1/3 of the residents) people.

Pass the executive retention bonuses around folks, I bet WE get stuck for the bill again.

[Cookie Monster]

They have been doing work, but given the scope of effort needed to harden the entire state, it's a monstrous task.

FPL replaced all or most of the overhead poles in my area with gargantuan concrete pillars. They replaced all of the underground lines. And they also have kept trees which would interfere with overhead lines trimmed back on a regular basis.

Due to the above, none of the residents in my neighborhood lost power during the storm, not even for a single second. Believe me -- it was a welcome change from my experience with Wilma when my neighbors and I lost power for nearly 3 weeks!

Unfortunately, it sounds like they didn't yet get around to hardening your area. I think my neighborhood got priority, since our lines were already in bad shape. Up until about 2 years ago, we would lose power roughly once every couple of months, sometimes for over 24 hours. It was ridiculous.

[edzone9]

I was lucky to have power after our evacuation..

Good luck to everybody!

Ed

[gnappi]

Agreed Jeff, hardening the entire state is a huge task, but the real question is... WHY does it NEED it?

That's like making an ocean liner fleet out of paper mache only to find that there are waves out there. Hurricanes have been around since, well forever, they put a shoddy infrastructure in place fully knowing it would fail in a hurricane. After what a hundred years of Florida storms they need to FINALLY think about reliability?

I wish someone with cahones in government would ask for detailed maintenance records AND repair records to find out if outages that caused deaths would have been avoided and THEN hold the executives personally accountable for the deaths.







 

[gnappi]

Oh, wait a sec, there are going to be SIX MILLION FP&L customers chanting...

FP&L is my SAVIOR, they got my power on after 5days, God bless them... public service commissions award them ANYTHING THEY WANT to make it better.

[FruitFreak]

Take some of those record profits from the 10s of billions they make and reinvest into the infrastructure (like Jeff mentioned) especially at strategic locations.  Comcast is notoriously bad about this.  Maybe scale back some of the executive bonuses... Does anyone know if FPL benefits from any state or federal taxpayer subsidies?