From the Naples Daily News:
Florida Power & Light Co. is facing a class-action suit after thousands of homeowners lost power over the weekend because of a cold spell.
The suit was filed Tuesday in Circuit Court in Palm Beach County by Anthony Stampone, representing thousands of Broward and Palm Beach homeowners who found themselves in the dark for several days in record cold weather.
The complaint is over the “systemic failure of FP&L’s equipment, including the wholesale failure of transformers, power lines and other equipment across FP&L’s power grid in Palm Beach and Broward counties.” The suit alleges that throughout the area “old, undersized, or otherwise inadequate FP&L transformers were incapable of handling the energy load,” causing transformers to shut down or burn out altogether and leaving more than 25,000 homeowners in the two counties without heat and power in near-freezing conditions.
The class action seeks three remedies, including injuctive relief to require FPL to make sure that what happened this weekend never happens again and to ensure it completely restores power promptly to all affected households. It also seeks damages for personal property and the “loss of use of homes, loss of enjoyment of life and inconvenience.”
“This frivolous lawsuit is utterly without merit,” said FPL spokeswoman Sarah Marmion.
“This type of complaint falls under the jurisdiction of the Public Service Commission, which just this morning commended the hard work of FPL employees during this record-breaking cold streak.”
On Monday morning, customer demand for electricity reached an all-time of 24,354 megawatt-hours, according to FPL. Before the cold snap the all-time high was 22,361 megawatt-hours, set on Aug. 17, 2005.
While thousands of customers lost power over the weekend FPL on average still maintained service for 99 percent of its customers while operating at near-maximum capacity, Marmion said.
“No system is perfect, and localized outages occur across the country all the time. We know how hard it is to be without power, especially in cold weather, and that’s why we worked around the clock to restore service to customers who lost power,” she said.
FPL deployed 1,300 workers to restore power safely and as quickly as possible, Marmion said.
“Out of the 800,000 transformers in our system, we had to replace about 1,300, or .2 percent. Our transformers are designed to meet normal weather conditions in Florida, but even under the record-setting cold weather we experienced, they held up well.”
