As Hurricane Helene passes through SC, utilities warn of ‘multi-day’ power outages
READ MORE
Hurricane Helene
Hurricane Helene is gaining strength and is forecast to track north toward SC where it will bring heavy rain & strong winds to the Midlands.
Expand All
As Hurricane Helene barreled north, South Carolina was left with nearly historic power outages that might take days to restore, according to the state’s utility providers.
The high winds in the early hours of Friday after days of heavy rainfall brought down trees across the state, toppling power lines and blocking roads that repair crews need to access.
“With all of the trees being uprooted and falling, we probably have more power outages than we’ve had maybe ever,” South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster said at a news conference Friday afternoon. “We’ve had a lot of them before and they always take a lot of time to repair and this one is going to be no exception, so we ask everyone to be patient.”
By one estimate, it will be the middle of next week “before life is back to normal,” said Keller Kissam, president of Dominion Energy South Carolina, at the news conference with McMaster.
As of Friday afternoon, the state had 1.25 million power outages, according to the Office of Regulatory Staff, with Greenville, Spartanburg and Lexington counties being the most affected. That’s more power outages than any other state currently reported, including Florida, where Helene made landfall as a category 4 hurricane.
The extent of the power outage has already drawn comparisons to other historic storms that have swept South Carolina. About 425,000 consumers of electric co-ops, nearly half of the total customers, had lost power along with 633,000 customers from Duke Energy. Also, 386,000 customers of Dominion Energy, one of the state’s largest utility providers, also lost power. That’s roughly the same number who lost power during Hurricane Hugo in 1989, said Kissam.
These are “significant numbers, bordering on historical,” said Ryan Mosier, a spokesperson for Duke Energy. “Customers need to be prepared for a multi-day outage.”
The most impacted part of the grid are the transmission lines, say utility officials. These are the large, high voltage power lines that move so-called “bulk electricity” across the state from power plants to substations, where it is then delivered to consumers.
While utilities representatives have told The State that crews are already out working to assess and repair the damage, the full extent is still unknown and utilities have warned that some areas will see a longer wait, likely days, to see their service restored.
“It’s going to vary across the state, it’s going to vary by co-op,” said Avery Wilks, vice president of communication for the Electric Cooperatives of South Carolina, an industry group that represents 18 electric co-ops across the state. “Coop crews are having trouble even trying to assess damage, to even go out there and see what’s broken, see what’s down... We are still very early into the response.”
The storm, which was expected to move west into Tennessee, struck more of South Carolina than many anticipated. Heavy rainfall, as much as 10 to 15 inches, in the days leading up to Helene making landfall combined with wind gusts of up to 70 mph brought down trees across the Midlands and Upstate.
And with much of the damage occurring Friday morning, utilities say that in some cases they’re still struggling to access the parts of the state that are most impacted.
“The storm definitely shifted from what the experts were projecting in a significant way,” Wilks said.
Information from utilities, state and weather agencies suggest that the western border of South Carolina, the Upstate and the Piedmont areas were among the worst hit by outages.
Some of these areas, which are served by electric co-ops, are among the most rural and rugged in the state, said Robert Hochstetler, president of the Central Electric Power Cooperative. Some co-ops saw almost their entire systems drop off during Hurricane Helene, which Hochstetler said had done more damage to the electric grid than any storm in decades.
As of 8:45 a.m. Friday, the Blue Ridge Electric Cooperative reported on X that approximately 63,000 of its members, roughly 85%, were without power.
The destruction that damaged South Carolina’s electric grid is also making it difficult to repair. In many parts of the state, trees and other debris are still blocking the roads, while floodwaters have cut off some streets, making it hard for utility crews to even assess the damage. Crews from Santee Cooper had to “cut their way” into the Rainey Generating Station, a natural gas power plant in Anderson.
Cell towers and infrastructure, including transmission lines, pylons and substations, have also been damaged, said officials.
Teams from the state Department of Transportation, along with local and municipal first responders, are working to clear roads. But the system of “triage,” meaning major roads and interstates are cleared first before moving to more rural areas, means that some areas will see more of a wait.
A similar approach is also being taken to the power grid, say officials, with much of the early effort focusing on the major transmission lines. Utility companies reported that they already had at least eight helicopters already in the air, some with “long saws” to cut debris from major transmission lines.
Santee Cooper CEO Jimmy Stanton said that the company’s power generating facilities are continuing to operate, and roughly half of the 116 major connection points damaged in the storm had been repaired.
But utility officials cautioned that progress might be slow even once major repairs were completed as getting the grid fully operational in some cases would mean going neighborhood by neighborhood to reconnect power lines to individual houses.
On Saturday, temperatures are expected to hit 86 degrees in some parts of the state, and many households won’t have their TVs working as college football teams take the field. “It’s going to be frustrating,” acknowledged Kissam, But he urged South Carolinians to help their neighbors and have patience.
“We will not stop working until the very last South Carolinian has their power restored.”
Mutual aid brings support for utilities
In the days leading up the storm, utilities said that they were leaning on mutual aid agreements to bring in crews to support South Carolina.
“It’s a very robust mutual aid system,” Wilks said, but he also warned “people need to buckle in for the long haul.”
In the Upstate, the Blue Ridge Electric Cooperative posted that it was expecting 17 workers arriving late Friday afternoon from Maryland and Virginia to assist the more than 200 employees who had been working to assess and repair damage since Friday morning.
On Thursday, Duke Energy posted on X (formerly known as Twitter) that it had over 18,000 line workers and support workers “ready to assess damage and restore power as soon as it’s safe to do so.”
Mosier said he had seen trucks with tags from as far away as Michigan, Ohio and Ontario, Canada.
It’s all part of “team South Carolina,” said Kissam.
This story was originally published September 27, 2024 at 12:50 PM with the headline "As Hurricane Helene passes through SC, utilities warn of ‘multi-day’ power outages."
