Why are nearly 1 million people in the Carolinas still without power? Duke Energy explains

Hundreds of thousands of people throughout the Carolinas are still without power, and many could be that way until Friday or longer, according to Duke Energy.

Helene left over 100 people dead and more than 600 people unaccounted for across 10 states. Around 640,000 Duke customers still do not have power in the Carolinas, according to poweroutage.us. Around 322,000 more customers of other power companies also were without power Tuesday afternoon.

Duke has around 18,000 employees working primarily in western North Carolina and upstate South Carolina to restore power as quickly as possible, said Jeff Brooks, a Duke Energy spokesman. Other companies are sending crews to help, too. But when the lights come back on depends on where the house or business falls in a priority list and what caused the outage.

“Many of our workers live and work in these communities as well,” Brooks said. “Some of them have experienced personal tragedy and challenges too, so we know all too well what it means to get the power restored and return these communities to some sense of normal after what has been a really tragic and difficult time for many of these communities.”

Who gets power restored first after Helene?

Duke Energy uses a process for restoring power that starts with restoring the system responsible for getting electricity from the power plant into communities, Brooks said.

The bulk electric system is responsible for moving power via transmission lines, he said, calling the lines the “interstates” of the power grid. Without the bulk electric system and transmission lines, fixing lines in communities won’t do anything. Workers also focus on repairing substations responsible for taking in the power from the grid, Brooks said.

“If you imagine my road metaphor, (substations) are like the off-ramp of the power grid coming off the interstate. So the high voltage electricity is reduced in voltage so that it can be spread around the community,” he said.

From there, Duke Energy focuses on restoring power to emergency services such as hospitals and police and fire departments, Brooks said. Then, crews get main power lines through towns running. That could include roads with grocery and other necessary stores on them. By fixing main lines first, often power is restored to thousands of customers in one repair, he said.

“Often people say, ‘well, why don’t you start in my neighborhood?’ Because often the problems that you may be experiencing are the result of a problem somewhere else on the line, further upstream from where you are,” Brooks said. “So fixing the line to your house may not do anything if there’s a problem somewhere else on the system.”

Finally, workers move into neighborhoods and individual residences, Brooks said.

Why does it take so long?

Restoring power looks different depending on the type of damage.

On a normal day, it might require resetting safety systems if a tree branch brushed against a power line. After storms, Brooks said, repair typically involves installing new utility poles and reattaching lines to the new poles.

“A repair like that could take several hours, even to half a day or more, in some cases. And when you look at the number of outages after a storm … each of those is a place that a crew has to go to complete a repair,” Brooks said. “If that takes several hours at each location, you get a sense why we have 18,000 people out there working today.”

Of remaining outages in the Carolinas, about half will require equipment to be completely rebuilt rather than repaired, he said. Rebuilding entire lines and substations is challenging work, Brooks said.

Communication has been a challenge in some places with cellular blackouts, he said. On Sunday, he saw a crew climbing poles behind a house in order to get a connection.

“We’re seeing historic damage from this storm on a scale that many of us have never seen in western North Carolina in recent memory… When we encounter hurricanes at the coast, the geography is and the infrastructure of the grid is a little more accustomed to that type of wind,” Brooks said. “What we’re seeing in the western portion of the state is tremendous amounts of damage, both from water and from wind, roads that are inaccessible, equipment that’s difficult to reach.”

When will power be restored?

Duke Energy expects most customers in both Carolinas will have their power back by 11:45 p.m. on Friday evening, Brooks said. But in some areas there is still no estimate for restoration.

For areas with major damage such as Buncombe County, Greenville, South Carolina and Chimney Rock, Duke Energy is still developing a response strategy and figuring out how to access equipment, he said. Temporary solutions in the meantime include installing temporary equipment or rerouting power and completing more permanent repairs later on.

Duke Energy isn’t working alone. Numerous electric companies from other states including FirstEnergy, Avangrid and Central Maine Power have sent crews to the Carolinas to help speed up the restoration process.

Customers can monitor outages and restoration on Duke Energy’s website.

“The challenge here is that you took a hurricane, which we typically see at the coast, and you put it in terrain that is challenging on a good day, and then when you put it in there with mudslides and flooding and all kinds of other challenges, it is probably one of the most difficult environments in our service area to restore power,” Brooks said. “That’s what we’re dealing with.”

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