Should you expect to lose your power with this potential tropical system?

After Hurricane Ian or any major storm, it’s almost a given that there will be some type of impact on your power.

Here on WINK, we’ve told you to prepare for impacts from the potential tropical system expected to hit the panhandle Thursday. So, we talked with Karen Ryan with Lee County Electric Cooperative (LCEC) about the potential impacts we can see here if this system brings similar impacts to that of our weather event Debby.

“We were actually pleasantly surprised with Debby because our system held up very well, we did have some outages, which was to be expected, but it was minimal, and it was as the storm moved through our territory, so we never had a large number of customers out at one time,” Ryan said.

Ryan said thousands of customers were without power, but their power was restored within the hour.

One of the things that’s brought up during every storm deals with underground versus above-ground powerlines and which one will lead to fewer outages. Here are Ryan’s thoughts on that.

“There is always a misconception that underground is better than overhead, and in certain situations, it is, but in search certain situations and locations underground is detrimental,” Ryan said. “With Hurricane Ian, where we had higher than expected storm surge. When you put water and underground power lines together, it’s never good, and so some of our underground facilities that were damaged out on Sanibel, they took the longest to restore power, and it’s because the saltwater corrosion damages them.”

Ryan said another issue with underground power lines is that trees have a big root system, and that’s where the wires are, and they just rip the underground facilities out of the ground.

So, all in all, depending on where you live depends on how successful underground power lines are in saving you from a power outage.

We also reached out to FPL who sent us this statement regarding power:

FPL is closely monitoring a tropical disturbance moving toward the Gulf of Mexico. While the forecast remains highly uncertain, we will be ready for potential impacts to Florida. In the meantime, we encourage customers to monitor this system and make sure they have a storm plan. Customers can stay connected by visiting FPL.com or downloading the FPL mobile app.