Florida Power & Light buries power lines underground in Golden Gate neighborhood

Power lines are part of the deal in many Southwest Florida neighborhoods, but soon they’ll be gone from a Golden Gate neighborhood.

On Thursday, Florida Power and Light began work on burying power lines.

“We know that underground power lines perform about 85% better than overhead power lines during Hurricane Irma. And they perform about 50% better in day-to-day conditions,” said Troy Todd, a senior project manager for FPL.

And that’s what has Alonso Wiener excited.

Power’s going to go out during powerful hurricanes like Ian.

But he’s tired of losing electricity during a typical day.

“We’ve had issues in the past where power flickers, especially during summer,” Wiener said. “You know  Floridians, you take the ac from us, we suffer so yeah, we’re very happy that that’s not gonna happen.”

The power company said the utility is still analyzing how well underground power lines held up during Ian compared to overhead power lines.

No matter the results, the company plans to keep burying power lines.

Already, FPL has converted 17 miles worth of overhead lines.

This year, we’re expected to add seven miles of overhead power lines to be converted to underground. And as a result, that’ll potentially impact another 1000 customers with better reliability, the power company said.

“We’re very happy that this is going to fix the power insecurity that we could have,” Wiener said.

FPL hopes in time, every power line will be buried.

So, you might be wondering how did FPL decide to bury the power lines in that Golden Gate neighborhood?

There is criteria set by the Public Service Commission and part of that criteria is to look at where outages happened during previous hurricanes.

During Irma, the neighborhood was without power for 11 days.