SAINT PETERSBURG, Fla. — On a 65-acre site in The Villages, you can find enough trailers for 2500+ workers to sleep in, more than 100 mobile generators and thousands of utility poles ready to be put up.
“Duke Energy is always preparing for the next storm. And so this is just one of the ways that we do that year round,” says Audrey Stasko, Duke Energy Spokesperson.
The site is a year-round staging site, an area they typically set up so crews can respond to areas hard hit by a storm, a crucial part of what companies like Duke Energy do come hurricane season.
“Hurricane preparedness or emergency preparedness is especially important for the utility industry because we are providing a service that people depend on,” Stasko added.
The Villages site is one of 60 sites across the state they have to mobilize massive crews, another they use is Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, where they had a major presence last fall before Hurricane Ian.
“Being able to have those staging areas in strategic locations and being able to shift in the event we need to act fast I think is the most important,” Stasko explained.
Though its more than just staging sites, a lot of work goes into preparing for a hurricane season, including actual changes to infrastructure.
Over the past couple years, Duke Energy has upgraded more than 12,000 utility poles in areas across the state, including a stretch on Dartmouth Avenue in St. Petersburg, where taller and stronger concrete poles now stand.
Data showed the older poles may have been vulnerable to flying debris.
Duke is also placing more lines underground, trimming trees near existing lines and even installing more of a new type of “self-healing” technology, which allows them to automatically detect outages and reroute power to restore it more quickly.
“Self-healing technology helps us restore power automatically, without having to roll a bucket truck, and sometimes they avoid the outage altogether,” Stasko explained. About 60 percent of their customers are hooked up to self-healing tech, and they hope that number will rise to 80 percent in the next couple of years.
As utility companies continue preparations deeper into this hurricane season, they’re reminding residents to prepare as well.
“This is especially important for people that are dependent on equipment that's powered by electricity,” Stasko added.