At its May 17, 2023 City Commission meeting, the Mayor and City Commission approved a dual referral to the Public Safety and Neighborhood Quality of Life Committee (PSNQLC) and, by acclamation, the Land Use and Sustainability Committee (LUSC) to discuss Florida Power and Light's (FPL) Storm Secure Underground Program (SSUP), also known as the Distribution Lateral Hardening Program, and opportunities for identifying Miami Beach neighborhoods that would be eligible for undergrounding of power lines through this program. The Storm Protection Plan (SPP) is funded through the Storm Protection Cost Recovery Charge and is already included in the monthly bill for all FPL customers systemwide. This charge is reviewed and reset by the FPSC on an annual basis.

The Distribution Lateral Hardening Program is one of several programs included in FPL’s SPP, which has been approved by the Florida Public Service Commission (FPSC) and is intended to protect and strengthen transmission and distribution infrastructure from extreme weather conditions, reduce outage times and restoration costs, and improve overall service reliability to customers. The following is a list of all programs included in the SPP:

1.    Distribution Inspection Program - The FPL Distribution Inspection Program was approved as part of FPL’s 2020-2029 SPP and 2023-2032 SPP. The Distribution Inspection Program is an eight (8)-year pole inspection cycle for all distribution poles that targets approximately 1/8 of the system annually (the actual number of poles inspected can vary somewhat from year to year).

2.    Transmission Inspection Program - The FPL Transmission Inspection Program was approved as part of FPL’s 2020-2029 SPP and 2023-2032 SPP. Under this program, FPL inspects transmission circuits, substations, and other equipment on a cyclical basis. FPL performs a climbing or bucket truck inspection on a six (6)-year cycle for all wooden transmission poles/structures and on a ten (10)-year cycle for all concrete or steel transmission poles/structures. All of FPL’s transmission structures, including substation equipment, are visually inspected each year. Transmission structures that do not pass inspection are designated for repair or replacement.

3.    Distribution Feeder Hardening Program - The FPL Distribution Feeder Hardening Program was approved as part of FPL’s 2020-2029 SPP and 2023-2032 SPP. Under this program, FPL hardens existing distribution feeders and certain critical distribution poles, as well as designs and constructs new pole lines and major planned work, to meet the National Electrical Safety Code’s (“NESC”) extreme wind loading criteria (“EWL”).

4.    Distribution Lateral Hardening Program - The FPL Distribution Lateral Hardening Program was approved as part of FPL’s 2020-2029 SPP and 2023-2032 SPP. Under this program, FPL targets certain overhead laterals that were impacted by recent storms and have a history of vegetation-related outages and other reliability issues for conversion from overhead to underground. The FPL Distribution Lateral Hardening Program also includes protocols for evaluating when laterals may be overhead hardened as opposed to being placed underground.

5.    Transmission Hardening Program - The FPL Transmission Hardening Program was approved as part of FPL’s 2020-2029 SPP and 2023-2032 SPP. Under this program, FPL hardens transmission structures, substations, and other equipment to ensure a more storm resilient transmission system. As part of the Transmission Hardening Program, FPL will replace all wood transmission structures with steel or concrete structures throughout its service area.

6.    Distribution Vegetation Management Program - The FPL Distribution Vegetation Management Program was approved as part of FPL’s 2020-2029 SPP and 2023-2032 SPP. This program consists of a system-wide three (3)-year average vegetation maintenance cycle for feeders; mid-cycle targeted vegetation maintenance for certain feeders; six (6)-year average vegetation maintenance cycle for laterals; and continued education of customers through its Right Tree, Right Place initiative.

7.    Transmission Vegetation Management Program - The FPL Transmission Vegetation Management Program was approved as part of FPL’s 2020- 2029 SPP and 2023-2032 SPP. This program is necessary to comply with the North American Electric Reliability Corporation’s (“NERC”) vegetation management standards and requirements. The Transmission Vegetation Management Program includes visual and aerial inspections of transmission line corridors, Light Detection and Ranging (“LiDAR”) inspections of NERC transmission line corridors, development and execution of annual work plans to address identified vegetation conditions, and identifying and addressing priority and hazard tree conditions prior to and during storm season.

8.    Substation Storm Surge/ Flood Mitigation Program - FPL’s Substation Storm Surge/Flood Mitigation Program was approved as part of FPL’s 2020- 2029 SPP and 2023-2032 SPP. FPL has identified certain substations located in areas throughout its service area that are susceptible to storm surge or flooding during extreme weather events. Under this program, FPL plans to raise the equipment at certain substations above the flood level and/or construct flood protection walls around the substations to prevent/mitigate future damage due to storm surges and flooding.

The SPP selection and prioritization criteria is applied by FPL on a non-discriminatory basis throughout FPL’s service area in order to address the worst performing circuits first based on actual historical experience. Specifically, the program analyzes data from power line performance during previous named storms, outages on power lines due to vegetation issues, and performance of power lines during day-to-day operations to identify neighborhood power lines (laterals) that are most affected according to these metrics.

FPL has evaluated every neighborhood power line (lateral) in its service territory, including an assessment of Miami Beach lateral power lines. Based on FPL’s criteria and metrics, it was the understanding of the Administration that FPL does not expect to complete any Distribution Lateral Hardening projects in Miami beach during 2024.  

The Public Works Department engaged in discussions with FPL and Stantec about the program and the alternative voluntary community led conversion process where the City would need to agree to pay the costs associated with the undergrounding of neighborhood lateral power lines within Miami Beach.

Based upon the available information, the Administration continues to recommend to have its neighborhood lateral power lines converted from overhead to underground through FPL’s SSUP.  

In 2023, sponsoring Commissioners, Arriola and Meiner requested a referral to the Land Use and Sustainability Committee (LUSC) to further discuss the program, potential resident eligibility and appropriate steps the Administration and/or City Commission would need to take to participate.

At its June 20, 2023 LUSC meeting, FPL representatives presented a PowerPoint Presentation on the undergrounding program.  A motion was made to continue the item to the September 27, 2023 meeting with the following direction:

a.) Have the Administration explore retaining an engineering consultant to navigate the FPL process, including potential benefits.  In August 2023, Public Works issued a notice to proceed to Stantec to perform consulting services necessary for the FPL SSUP Program.

b.) Have Public Works coordinate with FPL to obtain all relevant and available information specific to Miami Beach as it pertains to eligibility for undergrounding and related improvements.  FPL gathered the requested information and presented it at the September 27, 2023 LUSC

At its September 27, 2023 LUSC meeting, FPL presented an updated PowerPoint presentation on the underground program.  A motion was made to continue the discussion to the October 11, 2023 LUSC, which was deferred per FPL's request. At the October 2023 meeting, sponsoring Commissioners Arriola and Meiner requested that, since their official term would have been completed the following month, that Commissioners Dominguez and Fernandez be added as new sponsors, to continue this discussion.

Currently, more than 50% of FPL customers in the City of Miami Beach already receive their power via underground service.  The City currently has several overhead lateral lines projected to be converted to underground as part of FPL’s Lateral Hardening Program by 2031, which estimate may change based on application of the Florida Public Service Commission's (FPSC’s) approved prioritization criteria or future modification of the SPP as approved by FPSC direction.

The City reserves the right to opt-out of the Lateral Hardening Program and instead may voluntarily agree to pay the costs associated with undergrounding these laterals through a community-led process in which the City would lead the project.  

In a community-led undergrounding process, all up-front costs are paid by the municipality or community, which municipality or community may elect to recover through the implementation of one or more special assessment districts.

Should the municipality or community elect to implement one or more special assessment districts to recover the upfront costs associated with community-led undergrounding process, each property owner would be required to either pay the full cost of the assessment upfront or over a ten-year period, which adds a financing cost.

Conversely, should the City decline to voluntarily pursue a community-led undergrounding process, there would be no upfront out-of-pocket costs required for converting these overhead laterals to underground, which may be converted to underground in accordance with the Lateral Hardening Program included in FPL’s SPP, which may be amended from time-to-time upon FPSC approval.

Upon FPSC approval, all costs incurred under FPL’s SPP (including costs associated with the Lateral Hardening Program) are allocated to and recovered from all FPL customers systemwide through a SPP Cost Recovery Charge, which is reviewed and reset annually by the FPSC.

For a typical residential 1,000-kWh customer, the SPP Cost Recovery Charge was less than $4 a month in 2023.  By declining to pursue a community-led undergrounding process for the City’s overhead utilities, there would be no need for the City to lead the project or impose new taxes or fees on residents.

Based on the foregoing, the Administration proposes to not pursue a community-led undergrounding process for the City’s overhead utilities and, instead, proposes the City elect to have the overhead laterals converted, as applicable, through the Lateral Hardening Program included in FPL’s SPP, as may be amended from time-to-time upon FPSC approval, which will avoid imposing new taxes or fees on City residents.

The Administration recognizes that implementing the Lateral Hardening Program and such other FPSC-approved projects related to overhead-to-underground electric infrastructure conversion and hardening are subject to changes based on actual conditions experienced and requirements or modifications adopted by the FPSC.

The Administration is committed to continue working with FPL to facilitate the successful implementation of SPP projects citywide. This includes, but is not limited to, preparing a utilities relocation agreement with FPL, developing an enhanced and expedited permitting process for SPP projects, providing the public with information about upcoming SPP projects as it becomes available from FPL, and working with telecommunications providers and other overhead non-electric utilities to underground their infrastructure.