Winter Park to underground service lines

EDIT: The photo above was not taken in Winter Park. We simply liked the aesthetic. We apologize for any confusion.

The City of Winter Park has been working to underground overhead power lines since 2005 when it first acquired the local electric utility and it seems like that process is about to go a little bit faster.

The cost of undergrounding the electric line going from the pole to the house is currently the responsibility of the homeowner at a rate of $1,000.  

According to a newsletter from City Commissioner Sheila DeCiccio, roughly half of the City utility customers have chosen to leave their service drop overhead, which the City doesn’t like because “that causes inefficiency in the overall project and is less aesthetically pleasing when the project is done.”

To increase efficiency, the city will now be undergrounding all service lines to homes while crews are already working in the neighborhood. In order to accomplish this without slowing down the overall undergrounding schedule, the citizen Utility Advisory Board recommended that the City Commission implement a temporary rate increase through 2026 in residential customer electric bills of $0.009 per kWh. The Commission approved that increase in January and it will be effective April 1, 2022.

City crews will now be undergrounding the service lines to homes that are within undergrounding projects. City crews will also connect the meter base, if possible. If crews are unable to connect the meter, due to size, the city will hire an electrician to change out the meter base at the city’s expense. 

Homeowners will also be asked to contact their cable provider to underground their personal cable service line to their home if applicable. Once both the electric and cable service lines are underground, the city will be able to remove the pole near their home.

Each homeowner will be contacted to coordinate the conversion and to arrange the power outage required to complete this switch-over. Once the city has completed all the conversions within scheduled undergrounding projects as noted at cityofwinterpark.org/undergrounding, electric crews will go back and begin undergrounding all other remaining overhead service lines.

Homeowners that have already paid the $1,000 to underground their service line while city crews were working on an undergrounding project will be reimbursed via a credit on their March utility bills. 

According to a piece by Orlando Sentinel’s Ryan Gillespie, roughly 65% of OUC customers lines are underground and areas like Lake Nona in southeast Orlando require newer developments to underground their power during construction.