More than 169,000 without power in Manatee County after Ian’s landfall
The number of Manatee County homes without power as Hurricane Ian moved across Southwest Florida on Wednesday swelled to more than two-thirds of customers of local electricity providers.
Florida Power & Light outages grew from 38,910 at 3 p.m. to 135,670 by 10 p.m., FPL reported on its outage tracker.
FPL has 198,710 customers in Manatee County.
Peace River Electric Cooperative, Manatee County’s other major electricity provider, reported 34,315 of its 36,371 customers, or over 94%, were without power as of 8:50 p.m.
READ MORE: Lost power during Hurricane Ian in Manatee County? Where to check outage maps
Officials braced for the worst Wednesday as the monster storm began moving northeast from its beachhead in the Lee County area.
Ian will be a “life changing event,” Eric Silagy, FPL chairman and CEO said Wednesday in a press conference from the power company’s command center in south Florida. “This is not going to be an easy storm to recover from.”
FPL was monitoring high winds in the Parrish area Thursday that might result in the shutdown of the Manatee Power Plant.
“It should be noted that there would be zero impact on customers if we shut down Manatee in advance of Hurricane Ian. We have enough power generation capabilities on our grid to continue serving all our customers,” the spokesman said Tuesday.
On Wednesday, the Bradenton Herald asked for an updated status on the Manatee Power Plant.
The plant is operating normally, as is the nearby solar facility, Silagy said, offering no additional insight into plans for the gas-fired plant.
The Manatee Power Plant with its twin 15-story smokestacks at 19052 State Road 62 has been a landmark in the Parrish area since the 1970s.
In 2020, FPL officials said the smokestacks were obsolete and would be taken down in two years. The company has provided no further information about the plant or its stacks since then.
In December, FPL showed off its 40-acre solar array and huge storage battery across the street from the FPL Power Plant.
At its unveiling in December 2021, the solar battery could power approximately 329,000 homes for more than two hours.
This story was originally published September 28, 2022 at 4:24 PM.
