Florida Power & Light Co. will pay a $25 million fine and take steps to improve its power delivery system in a settlement announced Thursday with federal regulators over a 2008 blackout.
The settlement with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is the first civil penalty handed out under new enforcement standards Congress set up in 2005. Millions of customers of Florida Power & Light, which is a subsidiary of FPL Group Inc. (FPL), lost power in February 2008 after a fault at a substation in west Miami cascaded through the electric grid disabling dozens of high-voltage transmission lines.
Today's settlement demonstrates the high priority the commission places on electric reliability, said Norman Bay, director of FERC's office of enforcement, in a press release.
The improvements required of the utility under the settlement include better training and management procedures, additional protections on the grid and improvements to transmission operations.
-By Mark Peters, Dow Jones Newswires; 212-416-2457; mark.peters@dowjones.com