Hurricane Idalia Restoration Efforts Continue

In a statement posted on its website on Thursday, Florida Power and Light Company (FPL) said it has essentially completed restoration in Southwest Florida and continues to restore power in the hardest-hit areas of North Florida in the aftermath of Hurricane Idalia.

The statement revealed that more than 190,000 customers had been restored and around 9,000 customers were without power as of 8am on August 31. Nearly 50,000 outages avoided due to smart grid technology, according to the statement.

“FPL continues to actively restore power in the aftermath of Hurricane Idalia and won’t stop working until the last customer is restored,” the company said in the statement.

“Damage assessment teams are providing visuals of the damage in the hardest-hit areas of North Florida – closest to Idalia’s direct path – to get the right crews and the right equipment to the right places,” it added.

“We continue to work day and night to restore power safely and as quickly as possible to our customers affected by Hurricane Idalia’s destructive path across Florida,” FPL President and CEO Armando Pimentel said in the statement.

“As power and a sense of normalcy are restored, we remind everyone to stay alert and safe and to avoid any hazardous conditions,” Pimentel added.

In a statement posted on its site on August 31, Duke Energy Florida said it will restore 95 percent of customers who experienced the worst of the storm no later than 11.30 pm on Sunday.

“This is the latest time we expect to have the majority of customers restored, though many customers will be restored before then,” the statement noted.

Duke Energy Florida highlighted in the statement that it had already restored 156,000 customers as of 3 pm on August 31.  

FPL describes itself as America’s largest electric utility. It serves more customers and sells more power than any other utility, providing clean, affordable, reliable electricity to more than 5.7 million accounts, or more than 12 million people, the company’s site states.

Duke Energy Florida owns 10,500 megawatts of energy capacity, supplying electricity to 1.9 million residential, commercial and industrial customers across a 13,000-square-mile service area in Florida, the company’s site states.

In a statement sent to Rigzone on Thursday, Chevron said had begun redeploying support personnel to its Blind Faith and Petronius platforms.

“Production at all our Chevron-operated Gulf of Mexico assets remains at normal levels,” Chevron said in the statement.

“Both offshore and onshore, Chevron is following our storm plans and paying close attention to the forecast and track of Hurricane Idalia,” it added.

“Our thoughts are with the residents of Florida who are feeling the impact of Hurricane Idalia. Chevron remains focused on the safety of our workforce, the integrity of our facilities and the protection of the environment,” the company noted in the statement.

In another statement sent to Rigzone on Thursday, Kinder Morgan said all its Tampa and Charleston facilities had resumed operations.

“At this time, we are finalizing our assessment of our facilities in Wilmington, North Carolina, and we expect to resume operations tomorrow morning,” the company said in the statement.

In a release posted on its website on Wednesday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that EPA Administrator Michael Regan issued an emergency fuel waiver “to address a fuel supply emergency in Florida caused by Hurricane Idalia”.

In a report posted on its website on Wednesday, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) highlighted that Hurricane Idalia was impacting U.S. Gulf Coast production and pipeline facilities.

A statement posted on the U.S. National Hurricane Center’s (NHC) website at 7.45am EDT on August 30 highlighted that the “extremely dangerous Category 3 Hurricane Idalia” had made landfall in the Florida Big Bend.

“Data from an Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunter aircraft indicate that Idalia’s maximum sustained winds were near 125 miles per hour,” the statement noted.

At the time of writing, the NHC site is tracking Idalia as a post tropical cyclone with maximum sustained winds of 60 miles per hour.

To contact the author, email andreas.exarheas@rigzone.com