A years-long initiative by OUC to deploy smart grid technology is making power outages less frequent. And when outages do happen, fewer customers are impacted, and restoration times are faster.

This investment in devices that essentially allow the grid to “heal itself” contributed to OUC delivering the highest reliability in Florida in 2024, based on data submitted to the Public Service Commission by investor-owned utilities. In fact, OUC’s customers enjoyed the shortest average interruption time of these Florida utilities.

“Implementation and deployment of automated smart-grid devices has opened the door for OUC to continuously improve reliability for our customers,” said Fabian Richards, Manager of Distribution Planning & Reliability Engineering.

Restoring Power Automatically with TripSaver II

TripSaver II Cutout Mounted Recloser devices act like home circuit breakers and “trip” when the flow of electricity along a power line is interrupted, which is known as a fault. Temporary outages, which last less than a minute, are often caused by faults, such as tree branches brushing against a line. TripSaver devices restore power almost instantly, prevent temporary outages from turning into permanent ones and allow OUC to fix the issue remotely.

In case of a permanent outage, the device disconnects a “faulted” segment from the rest of the grid, which reduces the number of customers without power.

OUC began installing TripSaver devices in March 2018. To date, more than 1,300 devices have been installed in St. Cloud, and in neighborhoods like Pine Hills, College Park and Azalea Park. Eighty-nine three-phase reclosers, a related technology that can shield larger groups of customers from outages, also have been installed. This has led to an average reduction of 75% in momentary interruptions.

Reducing Outages with FLISR

FLISR (Fault Location, Isolation, Service Restoration) is a software-based system that reroutes the flow of electricity after a fault so customers, who would have been impacted, keep their power. The system also locates the source of the fault, which saves time finding damaged power lines.

Since June 2019, seven FLISR systems have been deployed throughout Rosemont, Azalea Park, MetroWest and St. Cloud. Future plans call for at least one FLISR system per year to be installed in areas where they can have the most positive impact on reliability.

Locating Outage Causes with Smart Fault Indicators

OUC began installing Smart Fault Indicators (SFI) more than a year ago, and, so far, there are 25 in St. Cloud and 70 out of a planned 139 in Orlando.

Without these indicators crews must begin inspections at a substation and drive along the power lines in the circuit until they find the problem area. But SFIs, placed at the circuit’s midpoint, indicate if the issue is “upstream” or “downstream” of its location, enabling crews to find the problem faster.

The Future of the Smart Grid

Thanks to ongoing smart grid technology deployments, along with rigorous infrastructure maintenance schedules (such as replacing wooden poles) and vegetation management (tree trimming), the number of OUC customers impacted by outages has been reduced, with 54,000 outages prevented in 2024 alone. And when there are outages, power is restored faster.

It’s what makes OUC the Reliable One.