Tampa Electric was recently awarded Chartwell’s 2025 Bronze Outage Communications Award for work that strengthened how the utility communicated during last year’s destructive hurricane season.
Chartwell’s 2025 Outage Best Practices Awards recognize excellence among electric and gas utilities for projects, programs and service initiatives aimed at improving customer experience, communications and awareness.
Tampa Electric’s communications team took a holistic approach to improve outage communications last year, resulting in high customer satisfaction, improved staff experience and increased capacity to meet emerging communication needs.
To prepare for the 2024 hurricane season, Tampa Electric made several improvements to communications during power outages. The company upgraded its outage map to ensure it stayed online consistently and streamlined its communication processes. The company also used artificial intelligence to monitor social media, enabling its teams to respond more effectively to customers’ trending questions. These enhancements improved the customer experience by increasing responsiveness and timeliness.
By employing innovative, proactive and customer-focused approaches, Tampa Electric effectively managed outage communications in the most destructive hurricane season in company history, which included Hurricanes Debby, Helene and Milton. In a post-Milton survey, 78 percent of responding customers were satisfied with Tampa Electric's outage communications.
Tampa Electric will accept the prestigious award at PowerUp: Chartwell’s Outage Conference in Dallas in October.
Tampa Electric, one of Florida’s largest investor-owned electric utilities, serves about 860,000 customers in West Central Florida. Tampa Electric is a subsidiary of Emera Inc., a geographically diverse energy and services company headquartered in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
