Today marks the 10-year anniversary of Tampa Electric’s worst hurricane season ever. In the summer of 2004, Florida was hit by hurricanes Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne. If you were living in Florida ten years ago, you likely remember being impacted by at least one of these storms.
Tampa Electric crews, with the help of assistance from other utilities, restored more than 635,000 outages that season. Tampa Electric is a member of the Southeastern Electric Exchange, or SEE, which is a network of utilities who pledge mutual assistance in case of storm or other emergency.
As a customer, you may wonder what we are doing differently and what improvements we have made in the past 10 years. Based on our experiences in 2004, we have increased our coordination with local governments, we are trimming trees more often and we have hardened our transmission and distribution systems. We invest more than $56 million each year in improvements and maintenance to make our system better able to handle extreme weather.
We also have a number of new, online and mobile solutions that did not exist 10 years ago:
- Power UpdatesSM is our free service to keep customers informed about their electric service. You can report outages online or by text and receive updates via text, email and phone.
- The Outage Map at tampaelectric.com/outagemap helps customers monitor and track outages in their neighborhood. The map displays the cause, status and estimated restoration time.
- We are using social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter to keep customers informed.
- This helpful restoration video explains how we prioritize restoration during widespread outages.
As we dedicate ourselves to doing our best to serve you this hurricane season and all year long, please use the resources we offer to help you manage the uncertainties that hurricane season can bring.
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