Hurricane Season 2025: Duke Energy gives inside look at control center

Utility companies prepare for hurricane season

With the official start of hurricane season just days away, Duke Energy is giving an inside look at its Distribution Control Center in St. Petersburg. FOX 13’s Matthew McClellan reports.

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - As Florida heads into what’s expected to be an above-normal hurricane season, Duke Energy Florida is providing a behind-the-scenes look at the operations center responsible for managing outages and power restoration during major storms.

Big picture view:

The company’s Distribution Control Center, located in St. Petersburg, monitors the electrical grid in real time and coordinates responses when outages occur. The facility is staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

"Not only are power grid dispatchers responsible for keeping our line crews safe – making life-critical decisions all day, every day – but they also help ensure our customers receive the reliable service they need to lead full, productive lives," Duke Energy Florida state president Melissa Seixas said in February when highlighting the importance of training new power grid dispatchers. "It’s a high-risk yet extremely important job."

Pictured: Duke Energy's Distribution Control Center in St. Petersburg.

By the numbers:

About 2 million Floridians across 35 counties rely on the utility company. Its system includes more than 18,000 miles of overhead distribution lines and nearly 14,000 miles of underground lines. Operators at the control center use automated systems to detect outages and dispatch repair crews across a 13,000-square-mile service area.

Company officials say preparation efforts are already underway, and that early-season storms in June and July can bring challenges just as significant as storms that typically arrive during the peak of the season later in the summer.

READ: NOAA releases hurricane forecast for 2025 Atlantic season

Duke Energy Florida operates more than 30 power generation sites with a capacity of about 12,300 megawatts. The company has made grid modernization a focus in recent years, investing in automated technology designed to isolate outages and restore power more quickly.

Pictured: Duke Energy's Distribution Control Center in St. Petersburg.

What they're saying:

"We even have something called self-healing technology, where dispatches don’t even have to touch those keyboards to change the lines," explained Duke Energy spokeswoman Ana Gibbs. "This technology is much like the GPS in your car: it can reroute the lines just like (your GPS) does around traffic. They do it with those power lines to turn them on automatically."

Pictured: Duke Energy's Distribution Control Center in St. Petersburg.

Thursday’s media tour of the Distribution Control Center provided a look at how the company prepares for hurricane season and coordinates storm response across the state.