As the 2026 hurricane season gets underway, Duke Energy is giving a look inside the nerve center it relies on to manage power outages across Florida.
The company’s Distribution Control Center in St. Petersburg is where Duke Energy monitors the entire electric grid for the state. The room is organized by region, with staff dedicated to specific geographic zones to manage high-volume escalations from field crews.
Lindsey Drennan, who has directed the DCC for the past three years and is one of just a few women to hold the position at the company, said the center operates around the clock, 365 days a year.
With last year’s relatively quiet storm season, Drennan said her team plans to run a two-day accelerated simulation of a major storm so staff can practice their roles and build confidence before any real storms arrive.
Beyond staffing, Duke Energy is expanding technology designed to limit how many customers lose power and how quickly service can be restored. The company’s self-healing grid technology automatically reroutes power during outages, reducing both the number of affected customers and the need for manual field patrols. Pinellas County is nearly fully covered by these devices, meaning what might have been a 3,000-customer outage can now be contained to around 400 customers — and resolved in under a minute.
During a major storm, Drennan said DCC staff work 16-hour days to restore power as quickly as possible.
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