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Hurricanes Michael and Irma collectively knocked out power for more than 6.5 million Floridians in a two year period, some for two weeks or more, but new legislation seeks to prevent the mass outages in the future.

Satellite photos taken before and after Hurricane Irma depict the scope of the damage caused to Florida’s power grid.

More than 6 million lost electricity.

The following year Hurricane Michael left more than 400,000 in the panhandle without power.

In both storms, most of the outages were caused by trees and vegetation taking out power lines.

“You always think to yourself why are we putting up those same polls,” said State Senator Joe Gruters.

Putting the lines back up can cost millions of dollars, but Gruters is sponsoring a bill making its way through the Florida Senate that seeks to prevent massive power outages in future storms by hardening the electrical grid.

“The numbers have shown when you have upfront investment in hardening the grid in a state like Florida you only get dividends on the back end,” said Executive Director of Energy Fairness, Paul Griffin.

The legislation would direct utility companies to develop a 30-year plan to harden the state’s entire electrical grid.

Lower income and rural communities often take the longest to come back online after a storm, so the legislation directs utility companies to harden the most vulnerable parts of the state first.

A maximum of 4% of the grid would be converted to an underground system each year.

The long term nature of the plan would, in theory, prevent customers from seeing large rate increases.

“Most consumers may not see an increase at all, but if you do it may be a dollar or two dollars in your monthly bill,” said Gruters.

Supporters say hardening the system will not only save the state money on repairs, but would also help Floridians to get back to work faster after a storm, reducing the amount of lost economic activity.

If the bill passes hardening plans will go before the Public Service Commission each year for review.