Hurricane Helene: A Call to Action to Invest in Grid Resilience

In late September, category four hurricane Helene traveled over 500 miles from Florida to the Southern Appalachians, bringing unprecedented rainfall to Georgia, the Carolines, Tennessee, Virginia, and Kentucky. During the region-wide peak power outage on September 27th, 4.6 million users were affected. As of October 15th, more than 20,000 residents in North Carolina and Georgia were still without power. 

Photo credit: Jonathan Drake 

In North Carolina, outages primarily impacted remote countries in the Appalachian Mountains, where challenging road conditions make it difficult for utility crews to access affected areas. Additionally, most distribution lines are above ground, which can be taken by wind and falling trees. To cope, many residents rely on generators, which are less reliable and more polluting than grid power.

Burying power lines has many benefits- one being greater resilience against weather-related damage. However, a 2002 study found burying all lines in North Carolina will cost $41 billion, increase electric bills by 125%, and take 23 years to complete. A more localized approach is building microgrids operating independently of the wider power system. In 2023, Duke Energy built a 2 MWac solar facility and a 4.4MW battery storage in Hot Springs, North Carolina to serve the population of just over 500- the project cost about $14.5 million, however, it was cheaper than the grid update to power the town, and was quickly restored and starting providing power after Hurricane Helene. 

New Orleans-based nonprofit, Footprint Project, also deployed solar charging stations and microgrids to provide power to Western North Carolina; the organization specializes in deploying sustainable energy solutions to support disaster recovery and reduce dependence on fossil fuel-powered generators.

This October, the Biden administration announced an additional $2 billion investment for 38 projects across 42 states to protect the U.S. power grid from extreme weather. One of the projects is to replace 24 aging circuit ties over 50 miles in North Carolina. These projects were forecasted to enable over 7.5 gigawatts of grid capacity while supporting nearly 6,000 jobs.