In Pinellas County, reprieve came when officials from Duke Energy, the sole electric utility there, promised they would have service fully restored by Friday at midnight. That deadline came and went, and thousands were still without power. Then another day passed. And another.
To Harry Sideris, president of Duke's Florida operations, the unfulfilled promises derive from a perfect storm of factors.
First, 1.3 million of the utility giant's 1.8 million customers in Florida found themselves without power. That's about 300,000 more outages than they'd projected before the storm.
“Irma was a monster of a storm for us," Sideris said at a Tuesday press conference in St. Petersburg. "It was the worst storm that we've ever had at Duke Energy.”
Then, even with all the help from teams sent from north to help out, getting to all affected properties in a timely manner proved more difficult than they'd expected. They couldn't access lines contained in some yards, for example, because they couldn't get their bucket trucks through narrow gates.
To top it all off, IT issues caused the utility's communications system to fail, which meant that a lot of outages were going unreported due to technical glitches.
Those are among the problems Duke hopes to solve before the next storm.
“We were hoping that we could push really hard and get everybody's power back sooner but we weren't able to accomplish that due to the debris and some other issues that we ran into. We really wanted to get everybody back sooner because we know how important power is to making your lives normal,” Sideris said. “We're looking at our processes internally to see how we can get better at this.”
Other issues include placing power lines underground in appropriate locales as well as installing automated meters so consumers don't have to even report outages.
St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman, who took to social media over the weekend to express his frustration over Duke not meeting its deadline, commended workers' tireless efforts to get as many people up and running as quickly as possible.
“I expressed some disappointment in that the time frame wasn't reached," he said Tuesday. "But as I said, we recognize that it takes the time it takes and we certainly were not upset at all and we're very appreciative of the men and women who were getting up in those trucks, climbing those poles and doing everything they could to get the power restored as quickly as possible.”
Yet while Kriseman — a Democrat who is not generally known for being complimentary to huge power companies — praised the workers' efforts, a Clearwater Republican running for governor criticized utility companies in Florida for putting millions toward campaigns and political action committees while ignoring important upgrades to the power grid.
“Hurricane Irma showed us just how vulnerable we are with 6.5 million Floridians losing power after the storm,” said State Sen. Jack Latvala, R-Clearwater, who announced his candidacy for governor in August, in an emailed statement. “In my home county of Pinellas, which was by no means the hardest hit area in the state, I heard from residents this week that were still without power. It’s time the utilities stop spending money on political candidates and instead protect the residents of this state.”
A check of state records shows in the 2018 election cycle the state’s largest utilities have already donated more than $3.6 million to candidates from both parties.
Duke and other utilities spend millions each election cycle helping get candidates elected who might block consumer protections and other regulations as well as expansion of renewable energy sources like solar.
“That money may not solve the entire problem, but it will be a good start," Latvala said. "And I’m sure the thousands of Floridians who are still struggling to live without electricity would be more than happy to hear our state’s utilities will stop political donations and instead focus on their welfare and needs.”
Latvala, who in 2014 railed against Duke for futzing with its billing cycle in a manner that cost consumers more on their power bills, admitted he has accepted contributions from utilities in the past, but would not do so now.
This article appears in Sep 14-21, 2017.