Biden to announce over $600M in Florida resiliency projects following hurricanes

(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden will travel on Sunday to Florida areas ravaged by the back-to-back hurricanes, and announce federal funding for projects to strengthen the electrical grid, according to the White House.

Biden will be touring St. Petersburg, one of the hardest hit Florida cities from Hurricane Milton last week, and reveal $612 million for six Department of Energy projects in the southeast.

Two of the projects are focused in Florida and provide a combined $94M in federal funds, according to the White House.

Gainesville Regional Utilities will use the funding to help mitigate the effects of increasingly extreme weather in north central Florida, “through storm hardening, as well as faster restoration through deployment of self-healing devices and tools that will enable more efficient and precise dispatching of field teams during outages,” the White House said in a statement.

Switched Source, a private utility technology developer, will work with Florida Power and Light to deploy Phase-EQ, which “optimizes power flow in distribution circuits, will unlock over 200 MW of system capacity, and improve reliability on circuits serving communities that are most susceptible to prolonged outages,” according to the White House.

“These investments are part of the president’s commitment to making long-term investments that protect, enhance, and upgrade our nation’s electric grid, especially in the face of extreme weather events,” the White House said in a statement.

Hurricane Milton made landfall in Florida as a Category 3 storm on Wednesday evening. At least 16 people were killed in the storm and over a million remain without power.

Biden has spoken to numerous state and local officials, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who he said was “very cooperative.” When asked if he would meet with DeSantis on Sunday, Biden said yes so long as the governor was available.