As Hurricane Ian made its way across Florida, Duke Energy’s grid improvements were already on the job helping combat power outages from the storm.

Smart, self-healing technology helped restore more than 160,000 customer outages automatically and saved nearly 3.3 million hours of total lost outage time.

“Hurricane Ian is a strong reminder of the importance of grid hardening and storm preparedness to help keep the lights on for our customers,” said Melissa Seixas, Duke Energy Florida state president. “Self-healing technology is just one of many grid improvements that Duke Energy is making to avoid outages, restore service faster and increase reliability for our customers.”

Much as the GPS in a car can identify an accident ahead and reroute around the incident, self-healing technology is like a GPS for the grid. The technology can quickly identify power outages and alternate energy pathways to restore service faster for customers when an outage occurs.

Additionally, self-healing technology provides a smart tool to assist crews in the field with power restoration after a major storm such as Ian, helping reduce outage impacts and freeing up resources to help restore power in other locations.

Three days after Hurricane Ian exited the state, Duke Energy Florida wrapped up restoration of approximately one million customers. This progress enabled the company to deploy more than 550 Duke Energy workers from throughout Florida, as well as contractors from across the country, to help restore power for Lee County Electric Cooperative customers.

Crews worked in Cape Coral and Pine Island, one of the hardest-hit areas in the storm’s path and completed power restoration for the majority of customers on Pine Island within around one week after arriving to the island.

Prior to Ian in 2022, smart, self-healing technology had helped avoid nearly 250,000 extended customer outages in Florida, saving around 285,000 hours of total lost outage time.

Duke Energy serves around 59% of customers in Florida with self-healing capabilities on its main power distribution lines, with a goal of serving around 80% over the next few years.

Duke Energy Florida, a subsidiary of Duke Energy, owns 10,300MW of energy capacity, supplying electricity to 1.9 million residential, commercial and industrial customers across a 33,600-square-kilometre service area in Florida.

Duke Energy, headquartered in North Carolina, is one of America’s largest energy holding companies. Its electric utilities serve 8.2 million customers in North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky, and collectively own 50,000MW of energy capacity. Its natural gas unit serves 1.6 million customers in North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Ohio and Kentucky. The company employs 28,000 people.