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Area Development - Site Selection, Facility Planning and Workforce Development

Florida Power & Light Constructs Distribution Control Center In West Palm Beach, Florida

01/19/2017
Florida Power & Light Company started construction on its new state-of-the-art distribution control center in West Palm Beach, Florida. The project will ensure greater everyday reliability and more efficient communication, collaboration and response during emergency restoration events.

The category 5-rated facility is an expansion of FPL's command center and will consolidate the company's two existing control center facilities in Miami and Sarasota. According to company officials, FPL's facilities hardening project is the largest in the company's history and includes the building of a new FPL distribution control center and hardening of 12 service centers located across the state to improve restoration time for customers.

"Since Hurricane Andrew, 25 years ago this year, and the historic hurricane seasons of 2004 and 2005, FPL has invested billions of dollars to make our system stronger, smarter and more storm-resilient," said Eric Silagy, President & CEO for FPL. "Most recently, these investments provided benefits for our customers during Hurricanes Hermine and Matthew, with fewer outages and faster restoration times. And, we continue to improve our storm response capabilities, now with the construction of a hardened distribution control center that will position us to get the lights on faster for our customers."

The hardened facilities will help offer everyday reliability and allow strategic pre-staging of more than 1,000 personnel to ensure FPL responds to its customers safely and quickly following storms. FPL's newly constructed Category 5-rated distribution control center, which will be a consolidation of the company's existing Southeast and Northwest control centers located in Miami and Sarasota, respectively, will leverage advanced technologies to provide the company with better collaboration during emergency restoration events.

"We train year-round to handle extreme weather events and continuously look for ways to improve our storm response," said Manny Miranda, Senior Vice President of Power Delivery for FPL. "The new distribution control center and hardened service center facilities will further strengthen our storm response capabilities, ensuring better collaboration during emergency events and allowing crews to quickly get to the hardest hit neighborhoods to restore service."

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